There is no sadder sausage than the Other Woman and her unrequited love. An alert chump sent me this submission, YourTango, “Loving Your Husband Hurts Me Too“, for the Universal Bullshit Translator.
After all this time, I still hope he leaves you.
I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.
Except for his pesky wife.
We sit across from one another at the Greasy Spoon diner, reaching over the table to touch hands, caressing thumbs with the tenderness of a violin player. We must be touching, always touching.
Ours is the kind of love that can only be venerated in greasy diners. The kind with the rotating dessert displays. You know, the classy kind.
I caress my Beloved with the frenzied pizzicato of lust. We are tender violins. We swell. We vibrate. We order waffles.
We joke and laugh, we talk, we sit in pure adoration. I know every inch of his face and he knows every inch of mine.
It’s my face he’s interested in. Really.
I order his food (one Belgium waffle on the soft side, a plate of crispy bacon) and he orders mine (a short stack, no butter, a bowl of fruit, a side of extra crispy bacon). We sit, together in our love, relishing every second.
I’m a few pancakes short of a stack. He is a flaccid Belgian waffle. But we share a deep mutual love of crispy bacon.
A car pulls up outside and warrants his cursory glance. The glance holds on a bit too long. The couple in the car comes inside and he follows their every move. They sit two booths behind us. He stares for a moment, then snatches his hands back from the table.
The divot in his ring finger catches the light, reminding me of the torture I so often hide when we’re together. He fumbles in his pocket, quick with fear, and slips his platinum wedding band back on his finger. My heart is in shambles. We get the bill and pay for our unfinished food. Outside, he apologizes. I say nothing and drive home alone in tears.
Is this the thanks I get? A half-finished waffle? I ordered your bacon correctly! I took charge of the menu! I caressed your thumb! And you ask for the check?!
Yes, it’s that special can’t-be-seen-with-in-public-together kind of Love.
You would think after three years of dating a married man, I would be used to this.
Apparently, you’re a slow learner.
But it still stings just as much as the first time we ran into a relative of his and I had to “hide behind the oranges” in the grocery store. In truth, this was an infrequent occurrence.
Because sometimes having to hide behind citrus fruit is completely acceptable in a relationship. Just so long as it isn’t frequent.
Maybe that made it worse? I’ll never know for sure. I suppose the fault is mine.
Okay, so I pelted your cousin with a tangerine.
If I had never let things progress, I wouldn’t feel the hurt tugging on my heartstrings when we needed to disguise our relationship or feel the jealousy when he went home to his wife, as he always did.
So why did I do it? Why does anyone do it? At the start of it all, the perks of the situation swam happily in my mind. Imagine the freedom! Imagine the absence of committed responsibility!
Imagine hiding behind oranges!
I was a secure, confident woman and was not willing to compromise my life for a relationship and everything that came with it.
Like reciprocity, morals… or self-respect.
Like most modern women, I felt I only needed a man for one thing, and a coupled lifestyle was not that thing.
I’m not narcissistic. I’m modern.
Yeah, you’re so not interested in being “coupled” that you’ll hide behind oranges or run from half-eaten breakfasts to maintain some simulacrum of a man’s attention. And you want us to think you’re a modern woman?
Somewhere a suffragette is spinning in her grave.
So I figured, who better than a married man? Moreover, a married man with kids!
I’m sociopathic too. The total package, gentlemen.
He had his responsibilities with his wife and family. There would be no awkward morning-afters, no constant phone calls or texts. I could have all the space I wanted and I would hear no complaints from his end. It would be easy and stress-free.
But what started out as a simple, no-strings-attached relationship (or at least the illusion of one) evolved into much more. You can never have your cake and eat it too.
Sometimes you have to get up from the half-eaten plate of waffles.
Maybe it was the jolt of electricity we both felt when we first met and shook hands or maybe it was our mutual understanding of the other’s troubles. Either way, we grew to rely on one another. We became each other’s go-to when one of us needed support.
He was just a supportive friend. A pal. The person you’d call if you were on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and the host asked, “What is the capital of Burkina Faso?” You unsophisticated, judgmental hicks might say something stupid like, “Ouagadougou.” But Modern people like myself and my Beloved know it’s a trick question. There’s no such thing as Burkina Faso!
And the casual friendship-with-benefits morphed into a caring, loving relationship. I could see the aurora dancing in his eyes when he saw me, and he could see the sparkle in mine. We knew each other inside and out, our lives so intertwined we were hard to tell apart.
[The UBT needs a moment to vomit….]
I could see the rings of Saturn frolicking in his trousers, and when he saw me, he could see sassy frauleins clogging on tables, with their naughty ankles and woolen knee socks, edelweiss falling from their buck-teeth. Our eyes met and it was earflaps. We knew each other catatonically. Deeply septuagenarian and intertwined, like obstructed intestines. Or pickled sideshow calf twins. In a Jar of Longing. Because aurora sparkles.
[I’m sorry the UBT appears to be malfunctioning. Let me whack it…]
But I didn’t count on the pitfalls of this type of relationship.
I thought I had it all figured out. I didn’t expect to grow to need him. I didn’t expect to miss him when we weren’t together, I didn’t expect to become so attached to his children that they felt like family, and I definitely didn’t expect to fall in love.
Or for him to fall in love with me. What I thought could be something simple ended up being a stressor. We had to hide. Our time together was constantly cut short so his wife wouldn’t find out.
But it’s okay for the kids to know. The wife? Fuck her. Children LOVE to keep secrets like “Daddy Has a Girlfriend.”
I was jealous and angry and crazily in love, and at times, so hurt I could barely stand. I hate being second in line, yet I was. He would tell me grand stories about how we’d be together full-time someday. He would leave her and be with me. A small part of me believed him, but the rest of me knew better. Yet still I stayed. We had such an intense connection that I was convinced living without him would be so much worse than enduring the agony of sharing my man.
My self-inflicted agony is the only agony that matters.
Like most everything else in my life, our relationship became punctuated by song lyrics I felt described our situation.
Sugarland, “Stay”: It’s too much pain to have to bear / to love a man you have to share.
The Wreckers, “Leave the Pieces”: You say you don’t wanna hurt me, don’t wanna see my tears / so why are you still standing here just watching me drown … You not making up your mind / is killing me and wasting time.
Nickel Creek, “I Should’ve Known Better”: Your love meant trouble from the day we met / you won every hand, I lost every bet.
Zac Brown Band, “Colder Weather”: And wonders if her love is strong enough to make him stay / She’s answered by the tail lights / Shining through the window pane.Listening to them made me feel better.
Well, it’s doing bupkis for the Universal Bullshit Translator. Please, please don’t feed the UBT Nickel Creek.
I’m so glad you’re a sad song lyric and not a real person inflicting harm on innocent children and a trusting chump. The UBT is relieved to know you’re just a figment. An undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato…
Holy Marley’s Ghost! Please tell me you’re just click bait and are not REAL.
It reassured me someone went through the same things I did, that I wasn’t alone in my torture. But even through the music, I could feel things starting to fall apart. I began to obsess over his life with her. What were they doing? Where were they going? Was he having more fun with her than with me? What was so great about her anyway? Our love for each other stayed strong, but the relationship had collapsed. I knew what I had to do, as much as I tried to ignore it.
On an unseasonably warm March evening, I ended it.
The chill had left the air and incoming Spring filled me with the power and motivation to do the hardest thing I knew I needed to do. My tears fell as fast as the first thunderstorm of the year.
“What are you saying?” he asked me. “I think I’m breaking up with you,” I said.
“Maybe you should think about it more,” he pressed. I told him, “I won’t come to any different conclusion. It’s over.”
And that was it. There was no pomp and circumstance. Just plain cold truth. We spoke sparingly over the next few days and it eventually faded to no communication. In silence, my world was ending. I gave up on love, on life. I stayed in bed all day and didn’t eat.
My world was ending fast like the first thunderstorm of Detroit. I gave up on muffins. There was no baton-twirling midget, no confetti-farting rhinoceroses, no candy. There was just rhubarb. And Silence.
[Sorry. The UBT is really having a hard time with this one. WILL IT EVER END?]
My friends and family were stuck. They didn’t know what was going on; all they knew was my seemingly unnecessary depression. I trudged back and forth to work amid discussions of counseling, tentative hugs and attempts at forcing me to eat. In the end, I was still broken. The only thing worse than bearing that heavy a weight alone is carrying it yourself.
WTF? The only thing worse than carrying something alone is carrying it yourself? Do you read yourself? Do you proof this bullshit?
And then he called.
Kibbles!
He wanted me to know his wife knew everything. That he loved me and couldn’t function without me. But he wasn’t ready. Could I wait, please. He needed me. He would be with me when his kids started school again. He would be with me in September. Yes, of course I would wait. He was my love.
I didn’t mean what I said about rhubarb.
The next few months were a whirlwind of elation and doubt. We were together nearly every day, as together as a hidden relationship allows you to be. He talked of long-term dreams, about our future house and trips we would take and having kids eventually. My heart longed for it and wanted to trust him. My brain knew better.
I sat by, clinging to hope, and watched him as he bought new furniture with his wife. They got a new car.
I got waffles and extra crispy bacon. I’m the one he really loves.
He hired a landscaper and started repairs on his house. I became a Monday through Friday, nine to five girlfriend.
For those forty hours a week that his wife was working, he was mine.
Because she’s the breadwinner?! Because he’s available while HIS WIFE WORKS and you think YOU are the MODERN woman? But that chumpy wife, she’s just an obstacle to your happiness, what with her JOB and FAMILY and all. Boy, you got a gem there.
He loved me and worshipped me and spoke of our future. But September came and September passed. The sun and moon rose and fell. And I was still alone.
He told me we’d be together in September. So every first of September, I wait. I go to the same Greasy Spoon diner and I wait for him. For my love. And as the years go by, my hope does not wane. It naively stays strong. Maybe one day, after all the lost time, he will join me and my September will come.
I am the Lady of Shalott. His waffles are getting cold. I will wait.
(This one ran before.)
Oh how sad for this poor modern woman. I hope that somewhere there’s a special help for people who go after married men because they feel it’s easier with less complications and responsibilities. I’m sure she’s moved on to some other woman’s husband by now.
So sad for her that her sausage sandwich turned into a shit burrito.
I hope that the wife finds out about this and ditches her asshole husband.
Amen to that. And if he broke the news to his wife and she knew everything, why is their relationship still in the down low? Why doesn’t he go move in with schmoopie? I hope his wife is just getting her ducks in a row. #newcarandlandscapingbeforebootinghisassout
The denial and delusion are strong with this one ????
If it didn’t destroy lives it would be laughable how hard these women try to convince themselves they aren’t cheap trash with a convenient hole.
I would dare say the men who cheated with my ex-wife probably seen here as nothing more than trash easy lay. Pump n dump is all she was. Disgusting and that filth came home to me and slept beside me… sick
Seen *her. Damn iPad changes my words.
I’m sure. Lots of trash men go for married women precisely because they’re seen as a no string attached lay.
I worked with a guy who went after married women because they were an easier lay then a single woman. Made me sick.
My ex husband told me that women looking to have an affair wanted to be with married men, because they knew they would have sex with no strings attached. This was why he wouldn’t wear his wedding ring, to keep from being inundated by married women who just wanted to fuck him.
And I believed that shit.
I forgot to say this was a single guy. He would go to clubs looking for married women to have sex with. He was a creep.
Yes the men are trash for doing it.
Very well said Kim.
Kim, my coffee came out my nose when I read this. Priceless. Convenient is the key. Wherever the hole be-ith.
I seen some of the texts O/wife sent my then husband and it was as pathetic as this
She actually said I beg you to leave that bitch ( me) she’s never laid eyes on me
Some of it was I cant wait to wake up with you blah blah really school girl things .
The reason I seen this as you may know as I have said before my then husband scrolled through his phone showing me shouting see Karen I love her and she loves me.
Must be an OW thing this pathetic sad sausage crapolla .
I wonder if she’s still sending those texts to my ex now they are married and have 2 babies?? 🙂
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is Limerence…………..or a first draft of a really bad romance novel.
I don’t know…she kind of had me at the extra crispy bacon.
Yasssss! Extra crispy bacon is the ONLY way to eat bacon.
I mean, I’d hit that. ???? ???? ????????♀️
How these hat lots sleep at night knowing the are inflicting life changing trauma to people including innocent children?
I remember a movie in which a person gets offered a box with a button. The offer is that if they press the button someone that they don’t know will die, and the button presser will become an instant millionaire. It is a moral dilemma, I get what I want and someone that I don’t know dies, if I don’t know them it doesn’t matter right? It doesn’t affect them.
So the person presses the button and a man comes in and hands them a suitcase full of cash and exclaimed that a stranger has died so now they can have the money as promised. They are so excited throwing money up on the air! Then the man asks for the box back and as he is handed the box he says: “ now I will make sure I give the box to someone that doesn’t know you”.
I believe in karma and how this things even out, you hurt others, you will be hurt in an equal manner. No one is immune to consequences. You can not just do what you want.
I questioned my ex-wife about what sort of “man” knows a woman is married and has young kids under age of 10 and STILL thinks ok lets cheat. Funny the OM never want to go face the husband. Cowards is all they are. Real MEN don’t cheat with married women, real MEN are not homewreckers and I know someday they will face total karma.
I said the same thing to my husband about his AP. I was even pregnant during their affair. I’m sure that put a damper in their relationship. I just cannot imagine what kind of woman does this to another woman? Obviously, a very disordered individual just like your x. There is something sacred about a family, particularly with young children, to mess with that is so fucked up. Nice to hear a non-cheater male perspective.
Back in 2017 in the office I worked in, some guy who was in the other team he had a lovely wife at home and she had just had a baby I think about three months prior or so. He was caught by management for sending sexual photos to other girls in the office and trying to cheat on his wife. The female manager who has to warn him was major angry and she flat out said to him “you have a wife and two kids at home and you’re doing this”. I just don’t get it, I don’t get why men or women destroy their own lives and families. I’m just not wired that way.
It seems like that guy should have been fired! These work cheaters really do risk sexual harassment charges. I told my stbx that, he’s so concerned about appearances, but how would he explain being fired for sexual harassment?!
It is hard to fathom how disordered these people are. I was aware things like this happened, I just didn’t think it was happening to me. I worked with a girl that had young kids and she was a serial cheater. She found many male “friends” at work. Even though she was good at her job, people talked about her all the time and she looked like a fool. She is now divorced. There is something seriously wrong with people like this.
It was a government job so very difficult to fire people as they hide behind the union. In the end they transferred him to a different location. The amount of cheating going on in that job was unbelievable.
Same with my ex and schmoopie. They were in government positions with high security clearance, yet they were openly rendezvousing during working hours, making drunken mistakes at work, annoying coworkers by flaunting their affair, but were impossible to fire and management didn’t care anyway. They also had a *convicted murderer* there (who was also a raging alcoholic and massive fuckwitted pervert) in a supervisory position. There were regular drinking parties on the government dime, hookups, sexual harassment, you name it. Managers not only did nothing, they even participated in some of the debauchery. It’s outrageous what they get away with in government. These are the people entrusted with the public good and many of them are the absolute scum of the earth.
Argh! This one is a huge sore point with me.
I always wondered that about my FW father (FWF). He had affairs with a few women at work, two of whom got promoted.
Did he harass them and solicit sex for them in exchange for their promotions?
Or did they instigate it and while whispering sweet nothings after sex say, “hey, I sure would like a promotion!”
One of the APs he is still in touch with. I do think she was an instigator and saw that she could get something from him. She blew up her own marriage (two kids there) to fuck around with FWF and then she got promoted and dumped FWF and then, being a supreme social climber, found a billionaire to marry. She surely knew what she was doing.
I hold the company he worked for responsible as co-conspirator in abuse, fraud, deception, and destruction of the family unit. They must have known. And they awarded promotions anyway. Assholes.
I’ve known it to happen three times in the work place. Was all in our government office job so getting fired barely ever happens. The guy I mentioned about a few posts up but there was a guy in my team and his wife was a senior manager in the same building but on a different floor in a different section altogether. They also had young kids about 1 years old and a 6 year old. He was caught sending dick pics to the office slut (the one who offered me to come to her house). She was sleeping with him and then all the managers found out about it and his poor wife had no clue. It was covered up.
Another situation was a manager who was 45 years old and he got fired for sexual harassment on the younger girls in our office. He was Skype messaging them with comments “are you wearing that to tease me” to 19 year old girls. He would come sit on our desks and talk to these girls and stare down their shirts in front of us. He was so creepy. They also found a hidden camera in the toilets and that had never happened until he started working there. Over a dozen girls came forward to senior management and he got fired after an investigation. He was so stupid to honestly think that in a government job in which you’re monitored and have to pass security clearance that all our computer communications would not be recorded. They simply read through all the messages and that was him fired. He had a wife and toddler at home and to make it even more sick, he had a teenage step daughter who I think was about 17. He was probably creeping on her too.
I came to learn of two occasions that the OW was in my home during the affair. The first time my next door neighbours saw her through the basement window seated at our bar. The second time when I was away for work and the kids were in bed sleeping (except that my daughter actually heard the doorbell ring and a woman’s voice in the house – she was 6 years old at the time). This woman was in my livingroom for a glass of wine.
In both locations of the house, there were large wedding photographs (16×20) on the walls, along with photos of us holding our newborn infants and other family photos. And, none of it seemed to phase her. The thought of it makes me nauseous. I just cannot imagine possessing that level of nerve or stupidity.
When I questioned him about this, along with learning that she had been reported on a half dozen cheater/homewrecker websites and had been arrested for assaulting her husband (resulting in a no-contact order for a year and loss of custody of her kids), all my husband could say at the time was that it she is misunderstood, she’s the victim of circumstances, she’s really a good person, she was the one abused by her husband, she’s being made an example of by system.
It’s why it’s so easy to fall into the trap of believing that your spouse is suffering from some kind of mental health issue…because it’s all so illogical. Yet, it’s who they are and they have just found someone with the same baseline of values to be their accomplices. Bonnie and Clyde…here we come! Isn’t it all so romantic!
“it’s who they are and they have just found someone with the same baseline of values to be their accomplices.” Which is a hard realization. As we believed they were so much better than they actually were. In my case mine “sold” himself to be, and in hindsight good people don’t have to talk it up.
When they bring them into the family home that is just vile. It is such a violation.
And hopping into the marital bed ups the ante.
In my case, the OW and my then-husband knew of their respective spouses.
Nevertheless, they were sleeping in each other’s marital beds. Classy people!
All cheating husbands are scum of course but I truly believe there is a special ring of Hell reserved for the he-cheaters who cheat while their wife is pregnant with their child.
It is the same special ring for women who cheat and get pregnant with an AP’s child, and let their husband believe he is the father.
When Dante wrote about hell, he assigned the lowest level of it, right next to Satan, to people who betrayed those who loved them.
Them too. At least female chumps know their children are biologically theirs. I can’t imagine what it must be like to discover that a child you have loved and raised as your own isn’t biologically yours. To see the face of the AP every time you see “your” child. Blech.
Happened to me. Way more painful then the cheating.
I wish that were true in my case. My ex cheated and impregnated a married woman with two small children 4 and 7 . My kids 17,19 and 24 were mortified that he would not only deliberately nuke our family but he would knowingly screw up little kids. The ex did not see the problem. He also met with the husband on three occasions that I am aware of the prove that he was the better man for her-he couldn’t spare me that knowledge. I also spoke to her husband several times and he confirmed it. Ex and the husband pick me danced / fought over that whore for months – she eventually divorced her husband and went with my ex for all of 3 months before going back to her ex husband who honesty thinks he “won”… (She chose not to go through with the pregnancy.). Some people just suck and men and women like that are entitled assholes at the end of the day.
My family and OW’s family hung out together once during the affair. I was totally clueless and kept trying to strike up a conversation with her because I thought “for someone who seems so close to my husband I sure don’t know her well at all” ???? But yeah, she saw me with the kids. He saw her spouse with the kids. All of them under the age of 6. They saw these super young families and the chaos of wrangling a toddler, and thought “our love is worth the destruction.”
The OW was in my home with her husband to collect our hand me down kids clothes and kids bedroom furniture.
I was happy to help out this young couple because we had the stuff going unused. I had no clue she was screwing my husband.
The whore stood in my house looked me in the eyes and then scuttled off with my child’s old things.
Having to picture her child wearing my sons old things and sleeping in his old cot made me vomit for weeks. Cheater couldn’t understand why this made me so upset.
Omg, similar circumstances but reversed. Her youngest is older than my youngest and she’d give us handmedowns. I found “favorite photos” on the iPad of my kid wearing the clothes while FW read a book she gave to us. I’m pretty sure he shared those with her. When I told him how much it grossed me out in retrospect he was like “the handmedowns started long before the affair and came from a place of generosity.” These people are just awful!
I totally understand the gross out feeling, Limbo. I’ll never understand why the cheaters can’t see it.
Where’s a grassy knoll for these fuckwits when you need one??
Your child’s old things? Well, why not. She was making off with your husband’s used dick. And you will never make either one of them understand why it was an appalling thing to do. They just won’t get it.
One thing the movie Troy got right was Paris, the archetypal OM, really was a pathetic wimp who ran and hid behind his stronger male relatives when the chumped husband found out.
Ironically Paris was played by Orlando Bloom, who was himself chumped according to the tabloids. Just goes to show there is no amount of looks or money that will keep you from being chumped if you marry the wrong woman. Although given that he managed to make the Holocaust all about himself I have to believe Justin Bieber is a whiny little manchild in need of a good a** kicking even without being an OM.
https://people.com/celebrity/justin-bieber-orlando-bloom-allegedly-fight-in-ibiza-spain/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-22146859
The box scenario sounds like a Twilight Zone episode! Even if karma never comes – even if the button-pusher lives to a ripe old age – they still have to live with the consequences and knowledge of what they did. Most of our disordered exes will never be happy, because they rely on kibbles to fill them up. But they can’t control other people. And best of all, we are free of their attempts to control and extract value from us.
Do you think they really ‘live with the consequences and knowledge of what they did’? Honestly, I don’t think we cross their sociopathic minds. It’s all about them and ‘they have a right to be happy’. They’re like little children. They’re not happy. They just go somewhere else or find something else to make them happy. And like little children, once they get their ‘fix’, they’re happy…, until they’re not happy again. They never grow up. That’s what’s totally bizarre. We just can’t fathom living with the guilt of what we did (were the shoe on the other foot), but they aren’t bothered by it at all. They are disordered. But there sure are a lot of disordered people out there. They’re in movies, in churches, in political positions, in the workplace, they’re everywhere. It’s so bizarre that so many people are okay with cheating. Why even get married? I just don’t get it.
I absolutely agree, Amazon Chump. They are perfectly fine living with it all. No guilt no shame.
My cheater screamed at me barely a 2 months after day: “I’ve said sorry, I’ve cried about this. You want me to feel bad about this forever?! Well I REFUSE to live that way!”
Nice for him that he can simply refuse to feel bad. Meanwhile the pain NEVER goes away for me.
Fearful&loathing, sometimes I still marvel how all those men act and speak identically. Mine started saying – screaming – those same words to me around a month and a half after te fourth D-day, after which I was unable to control my emotions, shock, reactions. He was so good at taking the spot of the victim in all of it that I actually started blaming myself for getting angry, for blaming him out loud, for being unable to stop crying and asking why. I’ve mostly forgiven myself for not loving myself enough. But I don’t think I’ll ever be able ti forget.
I think they get married to create a false image of decency and respectability and to have a spousal appliance to service their needs and love them, without the necessity of a real attachment and giving genuine love back. They want the benefits of marriage and family life without the obligations or sacrifices. You are just an object to them (everyone is, but a spouse is even more objectified), so of course they don’t feel guilty for mistreating you. Objects dont matter.
It’s chilling how callous they are and how they see other human beings as things meant to serve their needs. Once we internalize this truth, we can never go back to being partnered with such a disordered and creepy person.
OHFFS–BINGO!!!
Chilling. But true.
Cheaters do live with consequences. In the hundreds of stories I’ve read on CN, it’s rare for cheaters to abandon a spouse and kids entirely and happily pay the required support. Chances are they will continue feeling put-upon by whatever the court orders for some time. Many cheaters continue getting angry, or hoovering, for years afterward, showing that they’re still dealing with the consequences of their actions.
I agree that it might be rarer for cheaters to really care about what they’ve done to us. I think my STBX and many others do in fact regret what they have done, though obviously they still try to shift blame and externalize the reasons for their shitty choices.
My main point, though, is one that CL has emphasized in the past, and that Amazon Chump reiterated. We don’t need to look for karma or whether cheaters really are sorry, because even if they’re not, they still have to live with themselves. Cheaters might think they’re happy for a time – by their disordered standards – but that “happiness” is likely very superficial and is unlikely to last. They still have to live with their own disordered selves for the rest of their lives.
As for the question “why even get married?” – that’s like asking why cheaters like cake. They get a lot of benefits from having a spouse appliance! I think my STBX is typical in her thinking about how marriage works (for her), since logistical support is not one of her love languages. She enjoys the benefits of that support, but doesn’t really feel “loved” unless she’s being actively lovebombed. (Kibbles!) When we first got married 23 years ago, she really “felt the love.” But when she didn’t anymore, she felt entitled (on two separated occasions) to find that lovin’ feeling elsewhere, while still letting me deal with the house and kids. Why was she okay with that? Because she’s disordered, and doesn’t understand boundaries. Because we live in an era dominated by “thinkers” like Esther Perel, Glennon Doyle, Elizabeth Gilbert, etc. Or, as CL so eloquently says, because they can.
But I don’t think cheating devalues the entire institution of marriage. There are still many good reasons for non-disordered people to marry! After fixing our pickers…
LezChump,
Good insight!!
We can’t ascribe rational thinking to disordered individuals. They process things differently.
We try to figure out how they could have cheated because we would never have behaved that way. We try to figure out if they feel regret because we know WE would feel regret in a similar situation. I think this has an untangling-the-skein component.
We’ll never really know because we can’t (and don’t want to!) get into their disordered minds. What we can be sure of is what they show us: many act like victims; they blame; they regret what they view as unfair punishment. Sure they might be angry or upset that they lost their families or tarnished their reputations, but it’s probably not the same deep regret that we would feel were we (God forbid!) to have their lives.
For a while, I really believed that my ex and the OW were experiencing a happiness beyond any I’d ever known, that their days were filled with passionate sex, great conversations, rainbows, and puppies. This can’t be the case. My ex has always been a miserable, manipulative, passive-aggressive covert narc. He is who he is. No doubt she has severe issues, too. After all, she, too, was married with kids when the affair started. They slept in each other’s marital beds. Normal people don’t behave this way.
My guess is that these are two disordered individuals who are not happy; they simply aren’t capable of it. The glue that held them together during the multi-year affair was the titillation of sneaking around on their spouses. That fun is gone. A friend of mine pointed out that “They’re kind of stuck with each other.” I think she’s right.
It’s probably akin to drug users chasing a high. They can play and act all fun and interesting at first to each other and no doubt they did to us when we started dating them but overtime they WILL change and start to display who they really are and they will then no doubt cheat on each other and the cycle will rinse and repeat.
Wow, I really, REALLY hope she’s just a click-bait bot! Her other articles?
“9 Reasons My Friends’ Husbands Always Want to Have Sex With Me.” (Spoiler alert- becaaaaause you wrote a big article about how you loved sleeping with married men?)
“My Husband Stopped Having Sex With Me As Punishment” – oh pleasepleaseplease tell me your September finally came and that poor chump wife is free??
“I Cheated On Every Partner I Had – Here’s Why” – lemme guess, you’re an entitled, emotionless narcissist, lacking empathy or a moral compass. ????????????
This woman is the WORST.
There’s another one where the same author is claiming to be a man who cheated on his wife, so… yeah, probably B.S.
Barring genuine performance issues due to age or alcohol abuse the main reason men stop having sex with their wives is a) they are disordered people who value control over their wife over pleasure and b) they are getting it from somewhere else. Ask me how I know.
Of course a husband who won’t put out is as useful as a car that won’t start and significantly easier to replace, as my XH found out when I filed for divorce.
Yeesh! Was there a picture that tool of dime store novels Fido or Fabio or Filanderero on the cover of this literary ipecac? It will be a long time before I’ll be able to stomach pancakes waffles or bacon again. The person in this quagmire is as gullible as it gets. Hmmm … it upsets her when he puts his wedding band back on?! Holy shit ! Disrespect of another person’s relationship is bad enough but to Disrespect yourself….insane
“literary ipecac”. Perfect descriptor. *chef’s kiss*
Shame this piece ruined pancakes, waffles, and bacon for you. Why must cheaters tarnish all the good things in life?
Sounds like she took a writing webinar with Elizabeth Gilbert.
It is an excellent UBT, but it really could just be boiled down to “I love drama and thrive on dysfunction.” Because her reason for getting into the relationship is bunk. As the saying goes, “Dick is abundant and low value.” If she just wanted NSA sex she could get on a hookup site. If she wanted a “housebroken” FWB she could get on a swinger’s site and find a guy in an open relationship with a wife perfectly happy to approve a few monthly date nights.
She wants The Drama. She wants all this back-and-forth crap because she gets off on the heightened emotions of it all.
Exactly. I’ve posted here before on the article on women being attracted to married men. It’s not just the drama. It’s the thinking that a married man has his shit together more than a 40 year old single man, which…if a married dude is cheating on his wife it says more about his dysfunction than how incredibly special you are.
Exactly. Baggage Reclaim had a great article along those lines, aimed at OWs who think married men have been safely ‘vetted,’ and the author said, ‘It is not a victory to get an emotionally unavailable man down the aisle.’
Dude, maybe it’s the meh talking, but now I really want waffles for breakfast. I am now debating whether or not to get up, throw on clothing, and head down the street to Waffle House.
#BecauseCarbsAreAwesome ????????
#MMMMMMbaconBaconBACON
And on a lighter note, Voldemort is now FB official with one of the OW that they were cheating on me with when I was going thru 6 months of chemo 10 years ago. Guess it pays to hang in there & fight for your “twu wuv”… Congrats to FormerBestFriend™ on your promotion from side piece to future wifestress. Too bad your current spouse is still hanging onto you for dear life, huh? Those pesky little details getting in the way of The Greatest Love Story, Ever.
Actually, I’m sitting here with the ???? & ???? just waiting for the fireworks to start. Y’all know I run on pure cussedness if nothing else. ???? With a side of schadenfreude.
Now I *really* want waffles, LOL
Love your meh. ???? If I could, I’d meet you at waffle house and clink a cuppa to our freedom from Fuckwitville. ????
The Other Woman or Other Man is a conspirator in a crime.
This must be a Bulwer-Lytton contestant.
Or a Darwin Award winner.
https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/
I got saddled with a lot of character defects to wrangle with over my 57 years, and a lot of trauma to process, but I never veered into the lane of married men and I am extremely grateful for being any attraction to that colossal shit show.
When on a first date I noticed the wedding ring tan line/divot on my date’s finger, I asked him to take me home immediately. There must have been some sort of divine intervention because I was a pretty messed up 19 year old away at college at the time.
It’s good to have the Internet to get a peek into how their minds work. Back in the 80’s when I was last cheated on, I was left with only my own story looping around in my mind, keeping me awake. My best misguided coping skill was smoking cigarettes in the middle of the night, shaking in an armchair. Now I can just come here and read and the similarities are spooky but they are seriously comforting.
When I come here I try to be honest and that means reporting the facts of my story and how I feel about those facts. I didn’t create the story; the cheater I was married to did. I need to hear honesty and facts and feelings from everyone else. For me, that’s where the healing comes from.
The story of the infidelity in my case unfortunately includes some facts which are sensitive and not shared by everyone cheated on, but they are part of my story.
I think all of our stories are valid.
I have been minimizing my posting in places on the Internet because it seems like no matter what you say, someone comes after you. This is one of the few places I have been on the Internet where that is rare, and I appreciate it. The local newspaper published every letter to the editor I sent. I no longer submit letters to the editor because people can hunt you down using Google if you say something that upsets them. Speaking up can have some serious consequences now because of the Internet and smartphones and social media……
This is a place with a lot of very deeply wounded people that need a safe place to speak up. My intention is to be very careful here. I hope I can continue to feel safe here and tell the truth about the facts of my story because they may help someone else.
TYPO
“I am extremely grateful I was spared any attraction to that colossal shit show”
VH, I hope you continue to feel safe enough to post here. Your insights are invaluable. I also enjoy how you write, so there’s that entertainment factor.
I second that, VH. You write well (typos aside…)
Velvet Hammer
YOU.ARE.GOLD ????????????
The OW in my story is in an Open Marriage and had 3 other boyfriends, her husband, and my husband going all at once.
But she told my husband he was her favorite and she could see a future with him, he just needed to buy a house closer to her so they could more conveniently screw during the day.
Also complained how I must be a horrible prude for expecting him to be monogamous. And true monogamy comes from letting your partner have sex with others because then you are not possessive (WTF)?!
She stated she wasn’t breaking up a marriage, she was saving it (the institution of marriage) and saving him by freeing him from the constraints of monogamy.
You are divorced? I sure hope so!
So funny. OW has delusions of a great love between her and cheater. Cheater just thinks of her as a stupid side piece that is more than happy to believe his lame bullshit.
( in my diary, if I had one)
It pisses me off that the money he spent on paying for her pancakes should have gone towards new shoes as our 3 year old has outgrown her’s.
But then again, as they exchange syrupy kisses after pancakes, she must look much better than me, as I am at home brushing my teeth, after early morning nausea & vomiting,in early trimester pregnancy.
( and,I never knew or suspected a thing)
CHUMP I AM CHUMP I AM
Sorry my comment went astray. Sorry this happened to you. The horrible thing is, it happens to so many. Does that make the implosion of your beloved home trivial? Just because it happens so often? Nope. Hell nope.
How did the UBT manage this one?! Very amusing and infuriating. Sparkly turds really are perfectly matched. I wish they’d leave chumps out of their frivolous and entitled waffling.
“We became each other’s go-to when one of us needed support.”
Right. Support because… life is really hard at home with my inferior, ugly, boring ball-and-chain (the chump, who in reality, if you knew her, is none of those things) because she’s doing everything and getting nothing in return, and I’m gaslighting her and treating her like trash (sad sausage FW TFC); and because… I’m a superficial, self-centered jellyfish who has no morals or and who is so loved and prized that my married “boyfriend” hides me in shame; the instant I become real and stop molding myself into a wet dream, he will see how shallow and unreliable and needy I am and dump me (OW). We encourage one another’s lack of character, honesty, integrity and conscience. Supportive!
And where is the real support coming from? And who is supporting the unsuspecting chump? Parasites.
Re: the depth and style of the drivel: I saw so many shameless, idiotic correspondences. My seventh-grade students write more coherently, with more authenticity and substance. What FW and his young OW(s) wrote was shockingly cliched and empty – impersonal flirtation and flattery. Disappointing and disgusting, so bad it seemed a joke, I was shocked to see the “man” I thought I knew and respected thus revealed. It was all so fake and unappealing; it was also duplicitous and mean-spirited and had no basis in reality.
Discovery of the emails was both brutal and enlightening. This trove of unadulterated (and un-adult), undeniable truth shifted the balance of power and brought instant relief. The patterns and problems belonged to FW and were glaringly obvious, and these girls certainly weren’t better than me. Who were they to judge? The revelation that I’d been secretly ganged up on for years by these people, unable to defend myself, made me vow to stop helping them by being mean to myself as well. FW didn’t deserve me or my love. He couldn’t pull my strings anymore, and it was a relief to find the “proof” of the gaslighting and manipulation. These people and relationships are garbage, and I want nothing to do with any of it.
“You not making up your mind / is killing me and wasting time.”
The idiotic nobody at least knows what’s going on. She agreed to be part of this “competition” in which the FW is entitled to choose whoever he wants, however and whenever. Meanwhile, the chump gets to stumble around in the dark, humiliating herself. The OW doesn’t know this guy for beans, but she knows about his true character and the unethical and precarious terrain of their situation from the get go – in fact, it’s what attracted her – so she has no right to complain. Word salad.
” The revelation that I’d been secretly ganged up on for years by these people, unable to defend myself, made me vow to stop helping them by being mean to myself as well. FW didn’t deserve me or my love.”
Thank you for this ^^
My new mantra!
That’s a real compliment coming from you, ChumpQueen. Glad my rambling ruminations were actually helpful for once 🙂
“ The OW doesn’t know this guy for beans, but she knows about his true character and the unethical and precarious terrain of their situation from the get go – in fact, it’s what attracted her – so she has no right to complain.”
Yup. Sometimes us chumps ignore red flags; sometimes they’re more yellow flags. The APs have it pretty well laid out there what the cheater is capable of. But you know, they’re always the exception. He was actually gonna leave his wife because she knew his breakfast order by heart.
Interesting comment that they think they know your spouse’s true character. Although I sometimes feel that I never really knew my ex-husband, what I realize now is that I likely know him better than anyone and that likely scares the crap out of him.
So he was “hanging out” with the OW for about 21 months of the marriage before he left? Long ago, I tried to do the math on how many times did they really got to see eachother and came up with some estimates. Liberally averaging things out, it could not have been more than once every 1-2 weeks for most of those months, though there was a few weeks during the summer he went completely mental that I’m sure he crashed at her place and not at his buddy’s place. Yet, based on that, she knows the real him?
Oh no honey. We were inseparable when we started dating – three years before getting married and then 11.5 years of marriage – almost 15 years total. I know every friend he has ever had, am friends of the wives of all his friends, can tell you the birthday of every aunt, uncle, cousin, sibling, niece and nephew. I can name every job he’s had since he started working as a teen and every school he has attended. But more, I have almost 15 years of shared memories of him as my husband and father to our children. Saw him at his best and absolute worst.
Three years after leaving the marriage for this woman, she still hasn’t met a single member of his family (they refuse this relationship) nor has he brought her around most of his friends. He’s carved out a completely new life for himself and these two exist in a bubble, which means that they have not been tested by the trials and tribulations of real life. Well, I know what he’s like in real life, when things get tough, expectations are high. He’s not a problem-solver or a person of initiative. He gets to play knight in shining armor with this woman, lending his sympathetic ear and understanding. What a great guy. Sure. But, he hasn’t had to deliver on anything beyond that. At the end of day, this man is no king.
We know they wear masks and we know what’s behind those masks. When we see evidence of what they have said to the AP or written to them, we see how they are wearing a new mask. They hate that we now know enough to call them out, which is why the AP becomes much more appealing. Dr. Ramani just put out a video the other day that talked about what happens when they know that you know – they rage (or they run) and they’ll eventually deflate.
Dr. Armani is amazing. I spent half a day watching a ton of her videos.
And I agree on your assessment of knowing our FWs best and how eventually they do not like who they are with us once we really know them.
Despite cheating for more than 20 years with multiple colleagues and prostitutes and ‘ sugar babies’ on rotation, my cheater thought he could deny me a divorce. I told him to get out and move in with one of his whores. He said no that he could trust me and not them. Well when I replied I don’t trust him and expect to hear from my solicitor in the next day or so his jaw dropped. He thought he was that special. Then he said he wasn’t ever planning on leaving me, like I was supposed to be grateful. He wouldn’t move out. You’re lucky if they leave and shack up with the whore/s. Now I’m the lucky one because he’s now dead (nothing involving me). I feel so sorry for friends I know having to deal with the ongoing drama these cheaters cause while divorcing and then with child custody. I don’t think my friends would be sorry to have the same outcome as me, even with all the ongoing trauma I am slowly working through. Can’t work out what’s worse but what I do know is none of us ever did anything to deserve being screwed over by those assholes.
The delusion is so strong with these idiots. They intrude on a relationship they have never truly witnessed and know nothing about to chase after a person they don’t actually know while telling themselves they’re the ones who really belong with the cheater and know him the best. They have a level of delusion, selfishness, brokenness, and narcissism that is way above normal to knowingly be an affair partner. Part of the appeal to these types of APs is “winning” over the spouse. They’re such sorry ass losers and terrible people that they think winning the cheater away from the spouse means they’re better than someone. It’s an ego boost to them.
I guess it didn’t occur to the whore who wrote the article that his wife knows his orders too. She knows everything he eats and drinks because she’s the one who knows him the best and has lived with him and been in an intimate relationship with him for years. She most likely makes his every meal and grocery shops for him. And friends can often know exactly what their friends order too. His wife knows everything intimate thing that comes with being in a legit relationship with someone for years and living with them, but no, whore knows what breakfast he orders in this specific diner and that means something big about her. I guess she knows him better than his wife!!! She’s so special. Just wow. The delusion!
Even though she is sitting in front of a man who is a big enough piece of dump to cheat on his wife and is clearly a terrible person and is obviously a terrible partner, it doesn’t register in her mind. She lies to herself and tells herself that the cheating he’s doing behind his wife’s back doesn’t actually count. He’s not a real cheater, you see, it doesn’t count because his wife is terrible and his marriage sucked and/or was over for years. Cheater wouldn’t do it to her once they’re really together because he really loves her and has real happiness with her. They’re the ones who really should be together. They’re lovers who are being kept apart by forces they can’t control. BOO HOO!! WOE AS THEM!!!
In the whore’s mind, he clearly NEVER loved his wife and only married her for reasons so he’s never been truly happy or in love with her. They never should have gotten married much less dated! If only he had met whore first!
The cheater’s marriage has always been mediocre at best and miserable at worst because the spouses didn’t truly know each other or truly belong together the way he does with his true love: the whore. And the wife is a B who deserves this. Everything surrounding his wife is unhappy because she doesn’t support or appreciate him, doesn’t listen to him, she doesn’t talk to him, she doesn’t even try to understand him, isn’t nice to him, doesn’t even know him the intimate way whore knows him, is demanding and controlling and MEAN!!!!! She expects everything out of him and does nothing in return. In fact, she’s so irrational and crazy! How did ever put up with her?! The poor man. She’s a terrible wife. They’re not even right for each other either and they’re totally incompatible.
She knows this about his marriage and wife because the person dishonest and terrible enough to cheat on his wife told her these things about her and he’s clearly the most credible and honest person in the room.
He’s lying to her about everything. She’s lying to him about herself and everything too even though she probably doesn’t want to admit it. They’re both lying to everyone else in their lives. They live in a bubble of lies together, yet they think they’re the real thing.
Reality is:
He goes home to his poor wife at the end of the night — the woman who actually loves him (whore doesn’t love him even though she thinks she does),the woman who hurt her body to have his children, who loving cares for those children with little help from him since he’s busy f’ing someone else, helps with his family, sacrifices so much of herself for him, does all the work, who knows him the best, supports him, and who is so good and loving to him — and he is inexplicably mean and nasty to her. Criticizing her and picking fights and being generally abusive. He blames this on “work stress” so she tries even harder to make things easier for him and be understanding of him while it stabs her in the heart.
And that whore sits there selfishly eating his time and money which takes it away from his wife and children but she doesn’t care because she deserves it, reveling in how he’s fake-nice to her right now so that means he’s happier with her than his wife, thinking she’s something special and better than his wife because they both trash her and tell lies about her, and feels like she’s the real victim while she cries about the unfairness of it all. Eat shit, whores.
“This trove of unadulterated (and un-adult), undeniable truth shifted the balance of power and brought instant relief. The patterns and problems belonged to FW and were glaringly obvious, and these girls certainly weren’t better than me. Who were they to judge? The revelation that I’d been secretly ganged up on for years by these people, unable to defend myself, made me vow to stop helping them by being mean to myself as well. FW didn’t deserve me or my love. ”
They gang up on us because they know that individually they are weaker than they are. As Flick says to Hopper in A Bug’s Life “We pick food for both ourselves and you. Ants don’t need grasshoppers. It’s you who need us. We’re a lot stronger than you say we are. And you know that.”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3WrG5IBAjgs
In somebody’s room way across town
With Their minds all made up
And the shades all pulled down
Somebody’s trying to satisfy you
He don’t know you’re Wild and Blue
Here ya go UBT. Your poor oscillator circuit needs some calibration after that workout.
At first I thought this was made up because of the greasy spoon dinner. But it reminded me of my ex wife’s main AP. He would take my XW to cheap Mexican restaurants because he didn’t have much money because he was sending money to Mexico to his wife and kids. It blew my mind when I heard that!
Barf! Vomit! AACK!!! This is just so pathetic. Who in their right mind would EVER right such horseshit! Oh yeah! The sociopathic narcissist, that’s who!
I’ll write something more profound later, but I got to the part about loving those kids and nearly rage stroked. Fuck that stupid bitch.
LC,
I doubt that she had any sincere feelings for the children; otherwise she wouldn’t have repeatedly acted in a manner that threatens their wellbeing. I think that she only “loved them” as objects that embellish her f*cked up story, rather than as people in their own right. By introducing the kids to her and involving them in the deception, the husband was an ars*hole and she was an ars*hole for going along with it.
I hope that his wife divorces the ever-loving sh*t out of him.
LFTT
I don’t think she truly loved them either. Or felt like they were family. It’s just disgusting that she would write that. I feel incredibly possessive of my own kids from the OW and it’s the area I have not hit meh at by a long shot. I’ve written up thread that the OW gave us handmedowns for my youngest. My kids have hung out with her kids and then I have to hear my kids talking about them. I think FW and her belong together, but I don’t want the kids around that ho. It sounds like she spent a lot of nights away from her kids pre-affair because she found them overwhelming. My FW gets really agitated by normal kid behavior. A friend pointed out to me that they probably get the kids together because neither of them is capable of solo parenting. It’s less about wanting to pretend they have one big family.
Love is selfish, love is unkind. It is okay to envy, destroy, and dishonor. Take what does not belong to you for everything should belong to you. Love is self-seeking. Only your desires matter. Love can delight in evil and rejoice in lies as long as the lies serve the homewreckers.
– 1 Book of Whore 13:4-8
I loved those kids so much that I f’ed their dad and hurt their mom! I took actions that would hurt them by destroying and changing their lives forever!
Nothing original from these myopic bottom feeders, ever. FW and OW waxed poetic over their glasses of vodka (the only thing either of them truly love, since alcohol doesn’t need anything from or have any expectations of you).
Diner version of Eat Prey Love, with the typical side of bacon loaded with syrupy drivel.#Stickaforkinit
I don’t know if it was intentional or not to write “prey” instead of “pray” but it works soooooo well here ????
In the mid 1980’s, my brilliant and beloved therapist, with whom I speak to this day though she has not been my official therapist for many years, taught me this:
NOT EVERYONE YOU LOVE IS AN APPROPRIATE PARTNER FOR YOU.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO ACT ON ATTRACTION TO SOMEONE.
I was 22 years old, paying her maybe ten or fifteen dollars an hour. She was RIGHT and I LISTENED. A miracle.
That someone is MARRIED or a partner in a COMMITTED RELATIONSHIP, and acting on the attraction means I would be a CLANDESTINE ILLICIT THIRD PARTY who would be thereby hurting the unknowing partner, is the biggest indicator that whom I am attracted to is INAPPROPRIATE FOR ME.
Crime pays (or no one would do it) but the payoff is actually illusory crap compared to living in integrity, which pays infinitely better and indefinitely. Many of us have heard of great things happening when someone was in the right place at the right time and felt envious. Doing the wrong things keeps that very right and really awesome thing from happening and I am so glad I learned that when I did. You really do cheat yourself when you cheat and lie and steal, in addition to throwing your self-esteem away with both hands whether you’re conscious of it or not. It’s only by acting in integrity that the difference can be felt.
>>Crime pays (or no one would do it) but the payoff is actually illusory crap compared to living in integrity, which pays infinitely better and indefinitely.
Well said. I think there are scriptures which say something similar. I don’t want to argue about the existence of God, Allah, Buddha, Higher Power, or whatever. I’m just saying this has been good psychological advice throughout the ages.
Wise words from your therapist. I have been attracted to men who were “taken” before but I did not act on those feelings. The funny thing is if a married man ever hit on me I would instantly lose all respect, and thus attraction, for him. Women might sleep with a man they don’t love or a man they know they can’t trust (looking at you hybristophiliacs!) but not with a man they don’t respect on some level.
I agree that having been the chumped wife I could never do that to another woman. True feminism means looking out for other women, not fighting over men as if they were a bone to be split between two dogs. Which, if you think about it, also denies agency to men.
Even from a purely selfish POV the lot of an OW is not a pleasant one. It means hiding in the closet and behind the oranges. It means being someone else’s dirty little secret. I don’t understand how any woman could find that sexy. It also means being pitted against the wife. Don’t dance pretty enough? He’ll have a “fit of conscience” and decide he can’t bear to break up his family after all. I do not think Nitwit’s OW is in a good place right now. At 20 she is little more than a girl and far more ripe for his mind games and manipulations than I ever was. Since I am no longer in the picture he is probably triangulating with her and his (suspected) OM, playing the game of “Am I more straight or more gay?”, a game in which only he wins. And since I refused to buy him a flat screen TV as a “parting gift” he may be demanding that from her or him now LOL.
“I have been attracted to men who were “taken” before but I did not act on those feelings. The funny thing is if a married man ever hit on me I would instantly lose all respect, and thus attraction, for him.”
^^ same and same – I had to repeat this when I was still in throes of pick me, etc. And when I was tempted to compare myself negatively to a some random woman I didn’t know and didn’t want to know.
I am so sorry. You have lots of company here at Chump Nation (re: cheated on while pregnant, often with already-birthed littles).
One thing that’s funny about RIC– something that APs adrift on their own pastel-tinted, made-for-TV dream cloud reminiscences about star-crossed affairs probably weren’t counting on– is the practice of formal “full disclosure” where the “wayward” (cough) partner spills every last gruesome detail of their extramarital antics. It seems to be a thing with CSAT “sEx aDdiCtiOn” therapists in particular.
I learned that different CSAT therapists have different ideas about how much should be disclosed. Some put a cap on it, insisting it should be “just the facts, ma’am,” while others believe cheaters should answer every last chump question or barf up the whole shebang in a stream of conscience blurt.
I went partly through this process before waking up and calling it quits and agree with whichever guru therapist it was who said the process can “demythologize” affairs (i.e., reduce them to gross-out comedy fodder).
Nothing would bring AP’s mental emo soundtracks to a screeching halt and rip the hazy shade off the love light to replace it with a fluorescent bulb faster than knowing that, in the denouement of the affair, their star-crossed FW shmoop was sitting on a therapist’s couch reading from a thirty page full confessional describing every icky moment and observation. Like, say, the weird little confetti tears in the AP’s waxed rectum as she bounced backwards on his dick as the precise moment he realized that, if she wasn’t doing anal with him, she was doing it elswhere and he might be at high risk for contracting HIV– also the moment when he secretly booked another round of STD tests. Or realizing the AP’s sperm-stained couch contained stains in parts he didn’t remember toinking her on. Or describing her morning ritual of spackling her cystic acne scars with pancake makeup and greasing her thunder thighs with vaseline to be able to yank on a pair of skinny jeans that were getting tighter and tighter from all the high carb bistro dining and sugary cocktails paid for on the family dime. Or realizing she might have chronic yeast or worse because it took three showers and half a bottle of dandruff shampoo used as body wash to remove the smell of her before coming home. Or how when she smiled her rigor-mortis Instagram smile, it seemed her skin was only loosely attached to her skull. Or noticing how, when she binge-drank– which was five days a week– she farted sonorously in her sleep. Or the time she went commando to a bar trying to be “hot” and left a snail-trail on the PVC banquette. Or how distorted, bloodshot, screechy and demented she was as she called wifey names and demanded FW set a date for divorce.
For me the final straw was realizing that even in a ritualistic effort to be honest (in that TMI way that chronic liars do if they briefly toy with the exotic concept od redemption), FW was only displaying his struggle with some retrograde, pervy Madonna-Whore binary where he began to (duh) realize in stages
that maybe those who knowingly bonk married people with kids aren’t exactly top shelf or squeaky clean or playing with a full deck.
Oddly it really humanized that dogshit affair, which wasn’t so cosmic after all. It humanized the AP, though probably not in the way she would prefer. I could say, yes, she was pitiable and no doubt “hurt too”– but probaly not as much as she might be hurt knowing that I and several shitty therapists now know more than anyone ever wanted to about how she smelled after purging gourmet pizza.
As cheaters rhapsodize about “risking everything for wuv,” few imagine risking *that*, I’m sure.
I am legit going between shocked and nauseous.
Yup! Affairs seem to be such different relationships from legitimate ones beyond the transparency and honesty issues. A lot of people in affairs have super thick rose colored glasses on; choosing people who would not be on the radar if they were single and actually available.
????
The other spouse and I met up post-separation and just trashed talked the hell out them. Exchanged stories of the stuff we eventually found. None were sexual details but just stupid texts or pictures or memes. I know some of it got back to her. I don’t know if she has good enough sense to feel shame, but I’m sure there were several things written that sounded cute to her at the time, but come across as incredibly embarrassing and immature when revealed to other people. My FW was like well how is this thing any different than what we used to say to each other. My response: two decades of maturing. You’re not goddamn teenagers anymore.
I met with the ex-spouse of the OW too. Her marriage was just ending when she met my ex, but she had already been cheating on her husband for a couple of years with several men. What an eye opener when I heard his story. Things she claimed about her ex-husband were things my husband started to accuse me of, except that it made no sense when he brought it up to me in our marriage (huge Twilight Zone moments for me). But, then it fell into place. My ex mirrors whoever he is with, and in his desperation to relate to the OW, he was taking her accusations about her ex and attempting to transpose the same onto me.
That’s so creepy. Are they still together? I cannot imagine going through life like that (multiple affairs or needing to mirror whomever my partner is).
The ex-spouse in my case had suspected other affairs, and possibly a much earlier emotional affair with my ex that I was unaware of, during the last few years of their marriage. How my ex described this was that her ex was a super jealous guy and was constantly accusing her of affairs and had flat out asked if she was sleeping with him (my FW), which maybe put the idea into her head in the first place. Basically blaming the other spouse for introducing the idea of the affair and FW as a potential AP.
That’s really spooky. But I guess it’s not surprising that cheaters would get their DARVO-fodder from wherever is handy, including plagiarizing it.
Whe else thought that FW was only pretending he recognized the couple entering the diner so he could GTFO and ditch the greasy-fingered side piece? Also, FW’s responses to her dumping him was unintentionally hilarious, as it was so blase…Ok, see ya! Not exactly Romeo and Juliet.
Yeah, and sounds like she was really suffering from deep depression, maybe even PTSD? She couldn’t eat for a whole day. How will she ever recover? She’s lost so much, and after all she’s given. She really is such a good person.
Hadn’t crossed my mind about the fake recognition – but would be par for the course. Can you imagine going through a single day, lying and manipulating like an FW? After coming through this experience (should I be calling 15 years of my life an ‘experience’?) and with help from CL/CN, I feel like I see through everything. Wouldn’t go back, but it’s a blessing and a curse. I’m afraid the world isn’t ready for our X-ray chump-vision, all too often interpreted as bitter paranoia. We need more UBT’s (aka more Tracy’s – alas, impossible)!
This is truly the UBT’s finest work. Flaccid Belgian waffle LOL.
If this woman were my friend (not that I would have her for a friend,) I would point out that Mr Waffle is obviously lying to her just to keep her available for, um, breakfasts. This ain’t love, honey.
That FW’s wife is a real Waffle House-wrecker.
???? Good one
Oh, how the OW likes to play the victim. A few months ago my cousin whom I am close to like a sister Ran into Skankella(my cousin from hell). My good cousin had no choice to talk to her because they both are nurses and work for the same hospital. Skankella did not know that she knew about her affair with my ex. Skankella went on and on about how she was tricked into dating a married man. That she did not know he was married and as soon as she found out she dumped him. She then told her how angry she was that she wasted 4 years of her life. Well, Skankella try wasting 33 years of your life. Skankella told her that she will get even with my ex if it takes a lifetime. Then went on and told her how I was a nutjob and she understands why he lied and cheated on me. I must be at meh because I do not give a dam what she says about me.
UBT, you are very strong. I had to run for my barf bag way back at “I order his food…and he orders mine…”.
It makes me ill that these affair partners claim to love children they NEVER met – and they never even gave birth to said children.
Every child looks nice in their photos taken in the JC Penny studio with stuffed animals and soft lighting.
CHILDREN ARE ADORABLE.
But, the other woman has no business seeing the faces of these innocent children, whom she is harming.
This is NOT called LOVE. This is called selfishness, narcissism, and plain old “bat shit crazy” for this woman to think she has a place in these children’s lives.
Too bad we don’t have her photo plastered on a reward poster. Wives should be warned.
I think the affair partner needs a new play list because her whole relationship is summed up by Cake By the Ocean.
https://youtu.be/vWaRiD5ym74
Also, can I just vomit and say that these two placing orders for each other, is just creepy? Does she have a side of fruit to make sure her bowels stay regular?
It must be a bowel movement thing because this lady likes to sh** on other people’s families.