UBT: Brent Sadler’s Douche Solidarity
If you cut Brent Sadler, does he not ooze?
Sadler, has-been war correspondent in search of relevancy, wants the world to know that #HeToo has been the victim of scorned women who simply could not get over his fabulousness.
As he writes in the Daily Mail :
So often, when a marriage falls apart in the public eye, all the attention is focused on the woman in the equation, especially when infidelity plays its part. The wronged wife. The new love. The battle between two, often furious, females.
But what’s it like to be the man in the middle of such a storm?
It is something I’ve been thinking about recently, as actress Alice Evans, 53, the estranged wife of Hornblower star Ioan Gruffudd, 48, vents her anger, despair and heartache through social media towards her famous husband, who is now in a relationship with actress Bianca Wallace, 30.
It’s a situation that has certainly struck a raw nerve with me, enduring as I have decades of very public acrimony with not one but two warring ex-wives. And while I feel genuinely sorry for both women involved in the Ioan saga, I also wonder how he is feeling.
Stand strong, Ioan, Brent’s here for you, Baby. To pivot that spotlight back to himself and off you and those wronged women “in the equation.” (What equation is that, Brent? Are there triangles and hypotenuses?) Oh what Brent has endured. Ladies warring for him!
Tracy, I have no idea who you’re talking about.
Brent! Brent Sadler! Surely you’ve pined for him.
No. What am I missing?
If you could squeeze unctuousness out of rectum, you’d get this face:
A smile that says, “I sell reverse mortgages.” Those droopy lidded bedroom eyes. Is it palsy or did he accidentally drink his own mickey?
Perhaps one of his quarrelsome ex-wives could tell us what the allure is? Two of the three are friends apparently. United in mutual antipathy for Brent.
Many submitted Brent’s 2,000-word humblebrag to the Universal Bullshit Translator. But it was reluctant to fully commit. “Tracy, what if I fall into the gravitational pull of Brent’s charm?”
Occupational hazard, I replied. We agreed it didn’t have to translate the entire load of self-congratulatory wank.
Does he suffer guilt and self-recrimination for his role in all this pain, as I did? No doubt there is some significant hurt to see the woman he used to love now so unhappy.
After all, you once shared the limelight together and spoke about your love and professional respect for each other in glossy magazines, as I once did with both of my ex-wives — and meant it, wholeheartedly.
Are you 62 or older and need quick cash? Draw down that equity…
I loved and respected you, ex-wives. Just up to the moment of your obsolescence.
I saw both my marriages as being in a terminal decline when I stumbled across and fell in love with my wives’ replacements
You’re all replaceable, should I stumble.
My second wife, Debby, was an altogether different story. She was an air stewardess I met on a flight during the summer of 1984, three years after I joined ITN as an ambitious reporter.
(Soon after, I became ITN’s award-winning correspondent in the Middle East — an upward trajectory that led to me being headhunted by CNN.)
I’m ambitious, award-winning, and air stewardesses fling themselves at me.
(The parentheses are a coral for my ego. Like if self-regard were a raging bull and the fencing was flaccid punctuation.)
But over time the marriage became a cracked vessel because we had been steadily drifting apart.
You birthed a child and your vessel is cracked. Next wife appliance!
In less than a week, impetuously, we started to plan a future together, even though I was still with Debby, albeit with the marriage on its last legs.
My marriages were in terminal decline, drifting apart, on its last legs!
My dick, however, was impetuous.
However, once Mrs Sadler the second got wind of my new romance, she went on the warpath, accosting us in the lobby of the London hotel where Tess and I were lying low. It was an unfaithful man’s worst nightmare.
I’m the real victim here.
Next, she began to brand me a ‘love rat’ in the newspapers.
Ambitious love rat (award-winning cheater, upward trajectory, unparalleled in pomposity).
If I hoped for a fresh start by marrying Tess in 1993 (a wedding covered by Hello! magazine), it didn’t happen, even as two more children came along, Henry and Matthew, now 27 and 24.
Our marriage lasted barely six years — an all-too-typical lifespan for my doomed relationships.
I have no idea how my relationships doom themselves. (Hello Hello! magazine! Is it you?)
Happily, for me, I found my fairy tale, though Tess was the price to pay for it…
Hell certainly hath no fury like a Tess scorned. She dubbed me ‘an insecure, attention-seeking emotional child’ in print and said I was nothing more than a man who ‘cheated and lied and who put himself before the needs of his children’.
Four abandoned children, three chumped wives, but HEY, I found my fairytale.
That’s AWARD-WINNING insecure, attention-seeking emotional child to you!
***
I smell burning oil and there is an acrid smoke billowing out of the UBT. Its gears are grinding but it must… must… get to the Sad Sausage portion of Brent’s life. ALL WILL BE EXPLAINED. 
I saw things differently. Genuinely, I had always wanted marriage, family and stability. But being sent to boarding school aged 12, after my father died from heart disease when I was just nine, left me emotionally scarred, and being an ambitious war correspondent made a sustainable family life almost impossible.
I blame my wandering dick on boarding school. (The sort of elite institution you didn’t go to. Sure, family and stability are laudable — but do they win awards?) Was it the cruel headmaster? The classics? Or the sodomy and rhubarb custard that made me this way?
My father died when I was 9 and as an ambitious war correspondent, I thought what better way to honor his legacy than to fuck around on countless women and natter on about it in the Daily Mail.
****
The UBT has expired. Send lebkuchen.
Entitlement issues much? Geez, what a fucking jerk…
I cannot stand to read this tripe.
DEAR UNIVERSE, please help us to change the narrative from the FW’s self serving, empathy lacking bullshit,
to the TRUTH.
The End.
The entire thing supports Trust That They Suck.
This guy is a toxic shit storm of NPD. The side pieces who became the replaceable wife appliances suck too.
The victims…..4 children whom I hope have better life skills in navigating human decency than their parents.
I don’t feel at all bad for Tess….that trash willingly fucked a married man.
Brent is nothing more then a scummy piece of shit and any woman who gets involved with him at this point does so with eyes wide open. What makes these scumbags think they’re entitled to all kinds of privacy and image management?
All my ex could think about was his phony image and that others might get wind of his “catches up” with his ex.
Just in case shitty toupee guy ever reads this……lots of people know what a scumbag he is.
The scumbags feel entitled because they fancy themselves victims. Also, cue insatiable egos.
There’s a Joss Whedon piece that just came out in Vulture. It was not the redemption piece Whedon, nor his PR manager was hoping for. His narcissism was on full display. Victims of stern mothers, in Whedon’s case, or the victim of boarding school in Sadler’s case. Non disordered people will never understand the entitlement of these assholes with gaping character deficits. The best we can do is learn the warning signs and stay far, far away.
I was sent at age 1 to the kindergarten. I’m also scarred though nothing horrible happened to me there.
” But being sent to boarding school aged 12 … left me emotionally scarred”
Poor timid forest creature…
No, jerk, you are MORALLY scarred.
I was packed off to boarding school aged 11, but I paid attention to all of my teachers.
????????????
Yes, I was sent to boarding school when I was nine, and didn’t see my family again for 18 months – funnily enough, I’ve never cheated. ????????
My dad was dumped in an orphanage at birth and left there for four years while his teen mother’s hypocritical family rebuffed every attempt by wealthy, stable families to adopt him. Then he was taken in by his mother when she could manage it, but she lived under the shadow of domestic violence. Then he was drafted and disabled by an enemy bullet in one of the worst battles of the 20th century.
So weird how he didn’t cheat or beat anyone up. He had such enviable excuses to do so!
Ooh I learned a new word today “unctuousness”. Smug self-serving earnestness. smarminess, unction, fulsomeness, oiliness, oleaginousness. hypocrisy – insincerity by virtue of pretending to have qualities or beliefs that you do not really have. It’s a perfect word for certain persons in my life. Though I think “pig” would suffice for Mr. Sadler.
CL expands my vocabulary yet again. Mr. Wonderful the Unctuous Klootzak. Hits the nail right on the head.
Describes my FW perfectly.
“Unctuousness squeezed out of a rectum,” “sodomy and rhubarb custard”… HAHAHAHAHAHA
My face hurts.
I like how they pronounce “twat” in plummy British– rhymes with “that” not “ot.” This guy is that.
those were my favorites too! bahahaha!
Or, if you are in Michigan, send knish! Redacted emails publicly posted by the U of Michigan Board of Trustees. If only all FWs got this kind of light shone on them….
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10408971/Married-Michigan-Uni-president-64-fired-927-000-year-job-affair-subordinate.html
What a douche. Glad he was served with walking papers. Entitled ass.
He spoke at my daughter’s graduation last year.
He was so high and mighty, talking about integrity
integrity INTEGRITY! I tell you
He also spoke of opportunity.
Mind you, A2 students have been standing outside his house in all weather – demonstration at protests of and on for years, protesting the University’s dismal response to sexual assault. Trying to bring attention to the very issue the president was engaged in….
Ugh ????
While young professors are sentenced to uncertain futures in adjunct status, and millions of our kids are drowning in student loan debt, asshats like this are making almost a million dollars a year? ????
W the actual F is going on???
It’s called collective gaslighting.
“Hoist with his own petard!”
https://images.app.goo.gl/HR8fasjf8ic6BDWX7
Such a cliche. Horrifying.
Thank you for revealing the other woman, unlike the Daily Fail.
I hope that poor wife kick his nasty ass to the curb and takes as much as she can.
She better get hers and get out fast before the lawsuit, and you know the woman will likely file a suit.
Karma bus arrives early.
Not going to be easy to replace 900K per annum.
The things some people risk for an orgasm is astonishing to me.
Yep, I mean I am not even talking about the wife; they obviously don’t value the wife; but their standing in their community, their career everything.
Yep! Never gonna wrap my mind around that.
I am also bewildered by how someone can expect to get away with a workplace affair. I mean, things are bound to get messy, right? It is a bet with high stakes and the lowest chance of “success”. So many potential witnesses, the conflating of institutional and personal issues, etc. And they do get sloppy with their fucking around!
Cheaters are delusional.
Delusional yes…asshat hooked up with a divorced subordinate who didn’t have custody of her 5 kids. It didn’t last but asshat quickly moved on to marry someone 24yrs younger- not even born when we married. Ewwww.
It’s disgusting, our youngest was 1 when she was born, our deed to the house was older than the gold
digger. All three children are NC .
Brazilian Chump, you know the Brazilian saying, my dad used it all the time: where one earns one’s bread, one does not eat the meat. This applies to sparkledick many tmes as I now know…
Yeah, ClearWaters, my mom uses to say that too (my cheating father did not follow this wisdom in his heyday)!
The saying also applies to my FW XW, as you know.
I wonder how effective can be the work done by someone enthralled by a worplace affair.
In the States we simply say, “Don’t shit where you eat!” LOL
They are delusional. I also think for a season they think they are always the smartest one in the room. They got this etc.
Then the fall. So they scramble trying to blame everyone else including their FOO.
I was so lucky, I got to see my fw lose everything he cared about; and walk around with shit all over him. Hope he enjoyed that fuck fest, he spent the rest of his life with her shitty ass stuck to his shoes. And vice versa.
Well said Susie Lee.
“The things some people risk for an orgasm is astonishing to me.” Right?! All bow to the Golden Vaginas! It better be golden anyways! For what it costs!
My dad’s U of M ring was one of three items I inherited when he died.
I will break it out today and wear it with pride!!
This gives a whole new meaning to “Go Blue!”
????
Smearing Shakespeare’s sonnets by association. Brain bleach, STAT!
Yeah, that one’s on the list. It’s been a busy week of UBT fodder.
On the subject of famous, entitled asshats, anyone else see the Joss Whedon interview where he tries to resurrect his image by blaming his douchebaggery on complex PTSD from his childhood?
Here’s Whedon in 2017 after his ex-wife went public with his affairs: “While this account includes inaccuracies and misrepresentations which can be harmful to their family, Joss is not commenting, out of concern for his children and out of respect for his ex-wife.”
https://www.thewrap.com/joss-whedon-feminist-hypocrite-infidelity-affairs-ex-wife-kai-cole-says/
Here’s Whedon in yesterday’s Vulture interview: “On our second day of interviews, I asked Whedon about his affairs on the set of Buffy. He looked worse than he had the day before. His eyes were faintly bloodshot. He hadn’t slept well. “I feel fucking terrible about them,” he said. When I pressed him on why, he noted “it messes up the power dynamic,” but he didn’t expand on that thought. Instead, he quickly added that he had felt he “had” to sleep with them, that he was “powerless” to resist.”
https://www.vulture.com/article/joss-whedon-allegations.html
The interview is long and goes into excruciating detail about what a creep the faux feminist Whedon is.
Oh lordy, Joss is third generation showbiz royalty (both dad and Grandad famous film and television writers) and although I’m sure that comes with it’s own kettle of fish Joss had the same opportunity as all of us plebs to do some internal work and break the cycle (if indeed there is a cycle to break, I have grave doubts about this whiny little bitch’s ability to step out of his work role as a weaver of tales) but instead he has used his power and position to be a predatory asshole. Kai seems like a class act with her finger on the pulse.
OMG, just commented above on that piece. I pity the publicist that tried to take on THAT job. They are probably half-way through a case of hard liquor now, after reading that piece.
I read this ……Poor Jossy is now in self pity mode, with a little DARVO on the side. News orgs can’t pick this apart fast enough…calling Gal Gadot a liar in not going over well in Israel.
I don’t know what to make of Gadot jumping on the anti-Joss bandwagon at such a late date since she has a bit of a PR problem herself regarding #MeToo and rape enabling. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonwells/medium-post-gal-gadot
I worked in media and the hyper-ambitious female rape-enabler isn’t a mythological creation. Think of Roger Ailes’ secretary in the film Bombshell.
Yes, that one got sent to the UBT too. And the NYT story on the ex-wife who lives below her STBX and his GF.
There’s not enough lebkuchen.
Sounds like the NYT’s piece was written by someone who married for convenience in the first place because it’s different when you were NEVER THAT INTO THEM and the type of person who would… marry for convenience. That should be qualified in the headline. It would have made the column so much more interesting. I’d be fascinated to read about whatever childhood woes and horrors made someone so shallow.
When there’s time for the UBT for Joss Whedon (who I had to look up; had no idea who he is), I went down the rabbit hole and discovered that his instagram account is “Manly Unicorn”.
*I have no idea where “your comment is waiting moderation” came from ?!?
My feeling after reading this is rather like when viewing something icky on the sidewalk. I walk a wide circle and avert my eyes.
As a writer, it is interesting how he phrased this, “I saw both my marriages as being in a terminal decline WHEN I stumbled across and fell in love with my wives’ replacements”. A little self confession here, wouldn’t you say? These guys are so disturbing.
It’s only a confession if it refers to a sin or a crime. If you think it’s OK to line up your next marriage while your current one is still ongoing, this is just a statement of fact. I’m sure he sees it as a timeline (you know, the kind a famous war correspondent would want at the bottom of a page reporting on a conflict in the Balkans, where it’s hard for us civilians to keep all the dates straight) rather than a “self-confession”.
The fact that he’s a war correspondent tell us that he’s most likely an adrenaline junkie, and unfortunately he’ll always be looking for the next high in his personal life too.
Yup. I worked in the news industry years ago. Most of the men covering wars were alcoholics, drug addicts and surprise, cheaters. The owner of the agency where I worked had to clean up some messes. One of the staff (married woman) was spreading ‘em for the talent, on boss’ sofa during the weekend. She was of course encouraged to find employment elsewhere. Mr. Prize Winning Talent is still repped by my former boss. A couple of us were scratching our heads “why does his partner put up with this ?” I checked his and her Wikipedia pages. They list each other as partners, not spouses. Maybe a rare case of an open relationship, an arrangement, whatever the f one wants to call it ?
I recently shared Anita Shreve’s “The Pilot’s Wife” with a walking partner. The main character learns she’s a chump after her husband’s death.
I don’t know if my friend had ever experienced cheating (as a victim or perpetrator), but she trotted out many of the possible explanations – the couple had grown apart, he lost his way, he didn’t know how to admit his mistake.
She’s a smart woman. She doesn’t know the reason for my divorce since I am beyond the emotional vomiting stage. I think she may suspect my position now, since I had CL’s language ready to go. “He lost his way and his pilot penis fell into a flight attendant’s vagina?”
I am amazed at the different realities people live in. May it make me more sensitive to the feelings of “other” due to various injustices.
Brent Sadler is the human equivalent of something that you tread in and wish you hadn’t.
As an aside, does anyone think that he ever asked himself “Am I and the way that I behave towards my partners the common factor here?” Or is he more comfortable implying that to hold him responsible for the consequences of his decisions is to victimise him?
LFTT
This creepy dude must believe his own BS. I can’t believe how he can attract 1 women let alone 3-4 ??
Asshole ????
Yes, I agree it’s weird how homely he is yet got so many to marry him. What sort of women not find this goopy man attractive??!! The only laurels he would have to fall on would be his career and perceived money/lifestyle for these women. That is the only way anyone would give him the time of day.
Cycle: idolize, devalue, discard… idolize devalue, discard. Very typical Narcissist.
Once your educated, it’s easy to spot these people out.
It’s a matter of perspective I guess.
I like to say that flies think they hit the jackpot when they find a pile of shit
???? ????????
OMG did he really write this horseshit? 0 emotional intellegance. Some people just don’t have it in them to evolve and grow as humans. I hope his kids do better than him!
Forget writing it. Who prints this tripe! How does he have a job???!
What a dick. His bragging just won him the loser award. Any halfway intelligent woman would read that and steer clear of this asshole. How is that going to work out for your little afternoon delights, dickhead? You just outed yourself as a lying loser who consistently promises “forevermore” for the excitement of temporary romance and to get laid. It seems you’re mostly writing about yourself to impress other men you believe will envy you. Really? The patina of “war correspondent” wears thin over time, especially in light if your so-so looks, smugness, and smarmy deameanor. Good luck.
How did a clueless dude like that manage to survive in a war zone?
Wow, no self-reflection at all.
Probably hangs out in a hotel on the 10th floor watching the action with the help of binoculars and phone-ins from a few locals he paid on the ground to fill him in on what’s going on. Then hops a plane home and brags to the stewardess about his “war correspondance” exploits, hoping to get laid.
Yes! War correspondent who hides out in the hotel where all the foreigners stay.
This guy sounds even more self-centered than my ex. Which is saying a lot.
And probably spends all his time at the hotel bar, then goes home and plays it up like he’s James Bond. Really just Jimmy Boring.
Yes, this.
Knave-man is not Brent Sadler; he’s a bit younger. But once, Knave-man called me from an island nation that was at that time experiencing upheaval after both a natural disaster and an episode of political instability, claiming he narrowly missed being shot.
He relayed the story from a bar.
I saw the film, and there was a short burst of gunfire — way, way on the other side of the very crowded plaza. He was in no danger whatsoever, but editing made it look riveting.
Who knows who he picked up at the bar that night to calm his fraught nerves.
My X did the same and said there were two planes shooting at each other near the hotel he was staying at and he had to guide everyone to the basement for safety. At the time I was so worried for him but now I think just another lie.
Dope.
My sides hurt reading this lol!!! Thanks Chump Lady.
I wonder if he’s a has been war correspondent because he’s used the same clear analysis with the Afghan-Taliban war as he has with his warring ex-wives? ????
Yep. The fact that he’s press these days says it all, especially BBC.
Gross. If he cheats in one important part of his life, what about the other areas? Let him just string along some journalistic spewage while banging his AP instead of being where he is supposed to be. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.
A good point
Cheaters are liars and liars lie. About everything.
I am always be thankful when human dreck identifies itself so I can steer clear. If only all cheaters were aspiring writers and published their cognitive dissonance, self/centered idiocy, moral bankruptcy, emotional illiteracy, abject relationship ineptitude, decreeing themselves unfit for healthy human interaction in print, for all the world to see.
I will never forget going to see Fatal Attraction at the movies and my boyfriend, (cheater) remarked, “What was he supposed to do?” He actually believed the poor married man had no choice but to respond to the come-on. His response to that movie was a very revealing STOP sign which played out in our real life.
Articles like this are a really great litmus test for the people in your life and whether they should remain a part of it.
I recently met the ex-boyfriend of a dear friend. Ex Boyfriend bills himself as a Buddhist teacher. We were having a discussion about organized shoplifting rings. I expressed my dismay. He actually told me “they aren’t hurting anybody.” One sentence and I am certain I need never interact with this person ever again. If you think it’s up to you to deem whether anyone else is hurt, you are not the spiritual teacher you think you are, and I don’t want an arrogant fraud as a friend. One sentence and I was done. Picker improved.
Likewise with cheater apologists or cheater victim blamers. I don’t need zillions of friends. Just a few good ones.
And learning someone’s attitude toward infidelity is a good way to sort people out.
This is a very black and white issue with no middle ground for me. If someone defends cheating and blames a victim I am out of there.
Not hurting anybody? I was a store detective for a while in my youth. I was repeatedly attacked by these “harmless” characters when I made arrests. I sustained a broken ankle on one occasion. One of them even – and I kid you not- bit me. I got a systemic infection and had a bruise the size of a cantaloupe for three weeks.
Fuck that guru guy.
????????????
Wow. My knee-jerk (and wouldn’t we all like to knee a jerk) reaction to that “guru’s” statement that shoplifting “isn’t hurting anyone”, wouldn’t be focused on how wrong it is for him to decide if other people are hurt or not, my jaw immediately drops open because he is proclaiming that theft is okay. Theft is theft. Theft is a crime. It doesn’t matter if what somebody steals is a Lamborghini or a gumball, stealing is Just Wrong.
Yes, I will judge differently based on motive (peasant stealing bread to feed family vs shoplifting bling or electronics for fun and/or profit), but a *blanket* statement that any and all commercial property theft “doesn’t hurt anyone”, is like a cannonball to my cognition.
For me, his unethical belief registers as a much higher and worse flaw and red flag, than his low emotional I. Q. score. My brain can’t even get past his ethics, to even bother to notice anything else wrong with him. If he generically thinks stealing is okay, we’re done.
I’m in agreement but maybe not communicating clearly. Stealing is wrong, always…..because it hurts people. And I saw his justification, that no one is being hurt, as entitlement and arrogance. He believes he gets to decide if a victim is hurt or not, not the victim. A finer distinction that I had ever made before.
There’s no way to edit posts here after posting…????
My initial reaction, which I shared with him, was challenging his assertion that stealing wasn’t hurting anyone. That was the very obvious no-brainer dealbreaker.
The much more subtle insight I had, as a result of my post-infidelity homework, was on the entitlement issue; that feels entitled and qualified to declare if someone else is hurt.
That was a much more fine-toothed awareness that may have gotten by me prior to DDay.
Underneath, and used to justify and defend, every theft of any kind is the arrogant self-centered entitled belief that no one is being hurt.
establishment or own a store and tell us how he feels when violent thugs burst in and take everything. Guy like that would then milk the sympathy card forever, telling everyone about the trauma. This “guru” is such a stereotype, just like cheaters.
Not even a mention of the Buddhist principle “take nothing that is not offered” (that does not belong to you).
I knew him for five minutes when this discussion came up and don’t intend to waste another minute ever on him. That comment bugged me all day.
Same.
I walk past a Zen center when I do errands. More than several years ago, the 72 year old woman who oversaw the garden as a volunteer for many years was murdered by a young man (18 year old). He stabbed her in the neck to carjack her late one sunny afternoon, then threw her in the back seat and pummeled her when the car wouldn’t start. Witnesses called the police, and he was arrested and eventually sent to prison. The victim went to the hospital, had a stroke on the operating table and was taken off life support three weeks later.
I was stunned and disgusted by what a yoga instructor neighbor of the center and one of the practice leaders said. “The poor young man was sent to prison !” Wtf ?! Plus one of the center’s founders was quoted in the local paper “she [the murder VICTIM] was kind of abrasive. The nebbishy practice leader claims amends were made when the murderer’s mother came to the center and worked in the garden for a couple of hours.
I cross the street when I see these two now and ignore them.
Ps The subway is a few blocks. He could have jumped the turnstile like any of the other people I see when I used to ride it. #consequences #thoushaltnotkill
This ????????????????????????????????????????
Tedious in its banal delusion. Is the Daily Mail circle jerk headquarters now?
Yes.
If you ever followed Peanuts comic strips, you might remember Linus saying he loved mankind, but it was people he couldn’t stand. I have often felt this way. It is one of the main reasons I do not want to know about the private lives of musicians and authors and actors. I try to enjoy their work product without having to think about all their human failings.
Politicians, journalists, and many people I have worked with go into the “try to ignore” mode, too. It is hard to be an idealist. I read “all men are created equal:” and interpret “men” to stand for our entire race instead of one gender, or one-color gender of our entire race. Maybe I misinterpret? Maybe I am naive?
I try to live my life according to my ideals and values. Sometimes I don’t live up to my own expectations. It is very disappointing. I know there were some good things my exes were capable of. I would never have married them without witnessing their ability to do some of those good things. However, their motives, or value systems were different from mine, and I made the mistake of assuming we were on the same page. I also was foolish enough, at one time in my life, to think I could fix them, or save them from themselves. I now know that was a fools errand.
This man is vocal about what he wants and desires, and he uses his work as a justification for his inability to lead the life he would like for us to believe he wanted to lead. He even uses his own father’s death, and boarding school to justify his failure to behave in a moral fashion. This man lives in the minute and does what he wants to do when he wants to do it. He may have observed some remarkable events and reported them. He may have won awards for his reporting. None of those things excuse his inability to be a good husband or father.
The women in his life expected something they did not get. So did all Chumps here, and many Schmoopies. We were disappointed in our partners and in ourselves for believing our partners were better people than they turned out to be. Chumps don’t pretend to be perfect; we have to live with our own failures, but we experience true remorse, and we take responsibility for our actions. We show up when we are supposed to, and we try to act like the sane parent. We believe in our marriage vows.
I try to live my life according to my ideals. I am a what you see is what you get kind of person. Because of what I have seen in my past choices of mates, I have become very cynical about the motives of others. I want to believe there are good people out there, now it is just harder for me to actually believe in the people I meet. I cannot give up hope, because that would be despair, and I cannot continue to function if I despair.
So, when I read about people like this guy, I sadly shrug and put him in my no contact pile of people I can’t stand. I choose to ignore him, and hope that the rest of humanity has more values than he exhibits. I may be naive, but it is the only way I have found to continue to live in a world full of jerks.
“Chumps don’t pretend to be perfect; we have to live with our own failures, but we experience true remorse, and we take responsibility for our actions. We show up when we are supposed to” …
I love this, but please replace “Chumps” with “All decent people”.
Sorry. The edit works, but I always think about Chump Nation when I address the audience here. I still struggle with he/she and other modern uses of words to describe both sexes, or all genders and races. I’m claiming it is difficult but not impossible to teach the old dog new tricks! LOL
Of course I understood you were thinking primarily of Chump Nation, but the word “chump” has a pretty negative connotation :
“a foolish or easily deceived person”
… and I don’t think that is a very fair name for decent people deceived by expecting decency from other people they believe to be decent.
I was basically just wishing that you wouldn’t think of yourself as “foolish” and “easily deceived”, nor that the good qualities you list are the qualities of only foolish and easily deceived people.
Sadly, those good qualities might be exactly those that *result* in people being targeted by professional deceivers, but that does not mean those qualities are, in and of themselves, bad qualities, or the qualities of “foolish” people, or people who are *easily* deceived.
I understand the emotional earthquake of discovering you’ve been cheated on, and that it can make you feel SO STUPID, but it is NOT STUPID to trust that someone you (think you) know, and love enough to marry or commit to, is a decent honest person. Who deliberately decides they want to find and marry a liar and a cheat?
What kind of emotional hell would it be, to live your life eternally deeply defensive and suspicious and never trusting anybody *just in case* they might be a skilled deceiver, attempting to take advantage of you. Sadly, that is what many people become *after* being ripped apart by discovering they’ve married a deceiver.
But I don’t think that makes *them* a “chump”. At worst, they were ignorant of what signs to look for, or ignorant of how boundary violations look, or ignorant of what the red flags they observed meant, if they were not also even ignorant that they were *seeing* red flags. Or the deceiver was *so* skilled, there was nothing to detect or cause suspicion. How does that makes the deceived person “foolish” or “easily deceived”?
Ignorance is *not* stupidity.
Ignorance is simply a lack of knowledge.
I am not stupid, but I am ignorant about many things – I don’t know how to do brain surgery, I don’t know how to calculate water stresses on a dam, I don’t know how to crochet, I don’t know a *massive* amount of things. I am ignorant about them. That does not make me categorically stupid. Or foolish. There are a ton of things I *do* know. If I *cared* about the things I don’t know, I would learn about them. If I thought I *needed* to know about those things, I would learn about them.
What curriculum on earth, what culture, what nation, routinely educates its children to expect dishonesty, and how to detect liars and cheats? Dishonesty, lying, and cheating is understood to exist, but is not considered “the norm”. It is considered bad, and that “everybody” should – and wants to – strive not to be that way.
We all live our lives according to what we think is *probable*, not according to ALLLLLL the *bad* things that are *possible*. Did you feel “foolish and easily deceived” because you didn’t gear up to be attacked by a lion when you left the house today, or as you sat inside? Did you think it was *reasonable or likely* you might be attacked by a lion? If one escaped from the local zoo, and got hungry, and came across you, and attacked you, would that make you a chump if you got injured? You would probably take a closer look out your windows before leaving the house after that, but that would probably fade away over time.
I have been fooled too many times. And it makes me so angry at myself to keep trusting, when I find I have been deceived, *again*. It makes me think negative things about *myself* because I realized too late I have been deceived. I feel “stupid”. But I have *not* been *stupid*. I have been a decent, honest, ethical person, who has assumed that is the default setting for the human beings I encounter. It would cause me too much stress to live my life with my mental dukes up, always fists clenched, defensive against the expectation of treachery.
I dislike equating the fact that I have been deceived by dishonest people who have spent their life honing their skills to deceive, with a generic label of *myself* as “easy to deceive” and “foolish”. These are not everyday people, these are *professionals*.
If you leave all your jewelry splayed out on your front yard, and it gets stolen, because you trusted people not to steal it (by the way, you actually probably *would* be safe doing this in Japan), that’s very different from having your locked and secured house broken into and your jewelry stolen from your safe. I might think the lawn-displayer trusted people more than I do, and yet the jewelry could have been carried off by young children seeing pretty baubles not seemingly owned by anyone, or the shiny things could have been carried off by crows. But most people would trust that their locked house and locked safe were reasonable precautions. They are not “chumps” or “foolish and easily deceived”, if *professionals* cased their house, planned carefully how to rob them, and succeeded.
It’s not my column to name, but I resist the lable of “Chump” being equated to *decent, ethical, honourable, trustworthy* people, who were systematically targeted and deceived by people skilled and practiced in deceit, who specifically targeted them and took advantage of them.
It feels like blaming the victim to me, and calling them stupid (“foolish”, “easily deceived”), which I resist, especially when they are probably already angry at themselves and feeling like they were stupid, when they absolutely were not.
Unskilled and unpracticed and therefore ignorant in detecting deceit (or defending against lion attacks), because they did not grow up in a world where learning those skills ever seemed like it would be needed, yes. “Foolish” and “easily deceived” (because they were unexpectedly stalked and attacked by a lion, or a dishonest person), no. I don’t think *anyone* in “Chump Nation” deserves the title of “Chump”, even if they have been married, and cheated on, six times in a row. Trusting, yes. Ignorant of how to detect deceit, yes. Foolish? Certainly not the first time. After that it’s a matter of protective skill acquisition, against *experts*, and *correctly* calculating the probability of it happening again, and the necessity of devoting time and energy to learning to protect yourself.
How many of us are currently extremely skilled in card manipulation? How many of us have ever been professionally cheated in a card game (that you know of?) ? How long would it take you to *learn* to do sleight of hand with cards, stack the deck undetectably, shuffle cards into specific positions, force specific cards on other players deliberately? How long would it take you to actually be able to detect it being done to you? If you were told you were cheated in a card game, would you have all the skills you needed to detect and protect yourself in the next card game? Would you suspect that everyone in all future card games was also cheating you? Were you foolish and easily deceived in the first card game? Or were you deceived by professionals against whom you had no chance? And wouldn’t you still be unlikely to be able to detect card cheats in future card games without an enormous refocusing of your time and energy into acquiring the skills to do so? Would you, from then on, suspect *everyone* you played cards with, of potentially being a card cheat?
People expect that other people are like themselves. If you are a decent, ethical, trusting person, your default assumption is that everyone else is as well, until you are deceived, and then it’s a personal decision to decide how much time you spend on the defense, being protective, and not by default assuming everyone else is decent and ethical like you. Which can be exhausting. And since it’s not a natural setting, it’s easy to slip up. But nowhere throughout any of that, do I think the deceived victim has been “foolish” or *easily* deceived. They were deceived by someone with skills and intent, who planned and calculated. It wasn’t “easy” for the deceiver to do. It was a lot of effort. Once you *suspected* you were being cheated on, how vast was the set of skills you suddenly acquired to detect and defeat the “professional” deceiver? Ignorance of the deception, or ignorance of those of detecting skills, or ignorance of the need to be on the alert before then, was not stupidity or foolishness. You were not expecting to be attacked by a lion in your living room.
It’s probably a good thing this is going to get published so late that hardly anybody will see it.
I take it you’re new here
Thankfully the blog’s creator saw your long comment, as did I, and I imagine many others have since Chump Nation is international, covering many time zones.
I googled “tengu”. Mischievous and arrogant.
Apologies, Saffa, “Sanna” in my reply, obviously should have been “Saffa”. I have a very dear friend named “Sanna”, which I finally entered in my personal text dictionary to prevent it from being “autocorrected” to something else.
Amusingly/ironically, I looked up “Saffa” a week ago or so, to see if it had any definition, as I have been wondering about it for some time, and found that “saffa” has many definitions that all seemed very unlikely (such as a reference to the “Salmon And Freshwater Fisheries Act” in the UK), but the most likely (?) seemed to be “a colloquial expression for a person from South Africa”. I didn’t want to interrupt CN just to ask what your name meant though. Anyway, sorry for the accidental use of the wrong name.
I seem to have stirred people up here.
That was the exact opposite of my intent.
For people not familiar with CN, the word “chump” has only a negative connotation.
The dictionary definition of the word chump is *negative*.
These are facts.
I recognize “chump” is interpreted differently inside of CN, but nobody was *born and raised* in CN. Anybody who ever encountered the term “chump” *before* coming here, *first* learned the term as a negative. That definition is still something your brain is well aware of. If a total stranger came up to you at the grocery store, and said, “You’re a real chump!” you would probably *not* assume they were talking about you having been deceived by an ex. You would probably *not* assume they were familiar with CN. You would probably assume they were intending an insult. You would probably be right.
I wrote my original comment to Portia because what she wrote sounded to me like she was ascribing several good qualities as linked *only* to people who are “chumps”. What Portia wrote, seemed to me as if she were sad, and as if her self image was tinged with the more common negative definition of the word. I was trying to make her feel better, and to separate her thoughts from the negative definition that is still surely lodged in her brain.
I was hoping to communicate that she had all of those positive qualities and none of the negative ones – that simply decent people have all of those same positive qualities, without the baggage of the negative association with the *dictionary definition* of “chump”.
It is an act of will to overcome the cognitive dissonance between the dictionary definition of a word, and how someone else uses it, if they intend a different meaning from the one in the dictionary.
There is no ill intent, or insult, to any member of CN, in *anything* I have written in this thread, or in any other.
Since you were interested enough to look up the definition of “Tengu”, let me help you by providing you with more complete information… The short version is, there are good and helpful Tengu, as well as evil Tengu. The good Tengu are seen as protectors – of individuals, of monasteries, and of Japan, and there are shrines and temples dedicated to them all over Japan. This has been a fact of Japanese culture for over 400 years.
You can read more, here:
https://yamatomagazine.home.blog/2019/06/27/how-the-role-of-the-tengu-has-changed-in-japanese-culture/
I was given the name “Tengu” decades ago, by a senior black belt in a traditional style of Okinawan Karate, different from the Okinawan style I study, in part because of my red hair, and the fact that I study and teach martial arts and Japanese sword skills, all of which are associated with Tengu. In Japan, Tengu are credited with starting most of the different sword styles there. My friend laughed aloud when I informed him I was about to make a business trip to Japan, because it tickled him that they were going to be visited by a “real live Tengu”, a word he knew from having lived in Japan. At that time, I (like most of the world outside of Japan) had not yet ever heard the word, and he had to explain it to me. Decades later, Tengu have become popular in “manga” (basically, Japanese comic books), and that popularity has spread to U.S. and international popularity through animation, card games, video games, and computer games.
I am sorry your thoughts and feelings were so negatively affected by my post, that those negative feelings persisted for however many minutes you took to briefly research the word, and go to the trouble of posting only a negative definition of the word, especially when a positive definition has been equally understood since the 1600’s. I sincerely wish you had instead spent those minutes being happy, and focusing on happy things. I respect you Sanna, and have learned from your posts.
Hopefully, in less than 400 years, the word “chump” will also be readily understood by the general populace, as having a positive meaning, matching how CN uses it.
I don’t argue that chumps are stupid. It’s not stupid to trust the person you’re committed to and who has committed to you.
This is a topic for something longer than a comment, but I chose “chump” to get away from all the sugar coated euphemisms of the RIC. You cannot be chumped without a con artist. It’s far more descriptive of the experience — you were played. And you cannot play yourself. The term implies being acted upon by a deceiver.
Unlike “wayward” — oh hey, they’re lost. They know not what they do.
No one expects to ever need these life skills, of how to defend yourself against deliberate mindfuckery. I created this place to share those skills and decode manipulation because knowledge is power.
Thanks CL, and I think you describe your mission quite clearly on your About CL page. As for the use of the word Chump, it took me about one minute to figure it out after going to your page.
I would like to think it is because I am really smart, but I suspect it is because you are very clear about your intentions.
Please don’t change, if I had you in my time of Chumpton; at the very least I would have escaped way earlier than I did.
I proudly wear the name of Former Chump.
Thank you for explaining your rationale behind your choice of the word “Chump”. I appreciate you taking the time to do so.
I totally understand your intention to avoid RIC euphemisms.
I totally agree that people who have been cheated on, have been played and acted upon by a deceiver.
Unfortunately, if you look up synonyms for “con artist’s target”, they are all pejorative, because they are words used by the con artist, from the con artist’s point of view, and therefore are filled with disdain.
The victims don’t name and categorize themselves as a group, except perhaps by police report terms, such as “victim”, and “target”, which still emphasize them as an object of the con artist, and imply helplessness and weakness.
There are “robbers” but no such thing as a “robbee”. There are “murderers” but no such thing as a “murderee”. There are “rapists” but no such thing as a “rapee”. Those people are robbery *victims*, or murder *victims*, or rape *victims*, which labels the person as floating in a statistics column with no reference to, or blame placed on, the evil person who acted against them. There is an emotional and cognitive difference between those phrasings and saying “a robber’s victim”, or “a murderer’s victim”, or “a rapist’s victim”, which puts the focus on the evil person and the evil they did.
There is no good term for someone cheated upon, that describes and contains the sense of the decency and goodness of the person, and that harm was deliberately done to them by someone bad.
It’s as if there was no way to say “wounded” or “injured” without referencing how high someone ranked on the “Darwin Award” scale of being *so stupid* they ended up dead. “Yeah, she had a Darwin Scale 9 leg break… really severe, she must be a real idiot.”
The standard dictionary definition of the word “chump” is pejorative, and it’s the only definition I’ve ever encountered, and the only way I’ve ever heard it used.
I totally understand you do not think anyone who has been cheated on, is at fault for this, any more than the victim of any other attack. It’s a failing of the English language that there is not already a good single word noun that is commonly understood to mean “someone who has been cheated upon”. We have “cheater”, but not “cheatee”.
I am sure you explain how you are defining and using the word “chump”, in your books, and probably in your earliest columns. And it’s obvious in what you write that *you* are not using the word “chump” as a pejorative, and anybody who comes to CN will eventually figure out the word “chump” is being used differently here. But it is not the typical or dictionary definition of the word, and (obviously) takes some additional explaining to be made to understand how it is used here. Outside of CN, without the benefit of your explanation, if somebody said, “My ex cheated on me! I was such a chump!”, that would sound synonymous with “I was so stupid!”, not “I was so deceived.”
I do not mean to irritate you, and I am very sorry if I have, which I suspect must be the case, since you felt the need to reply personally. I absolutely respect all you have done, and all the good that you continue to do, with your books and blog. Thank you again, for taking precious time we all know you don’t have much of, to write and explain how you use the term.
“vents her anger, despair and heartache through social media towards her famous husband, who is now in a relationship with actress Bianca Wallace, 30.”
Sure, how dare a woman whose husband is lying, deceiving and stealing from her show pain and anger. Well I never…
Like we’re supposed to be grateful for the time we had with them and that they spent a little time gracing us with their lives. How dare we complain when they prove themselves to be future-faking lying cheats. Perhaps this article is a warning to chumps to back off in light of how the tables are turning, in part, from the work of Chumplady. They’re scared.
Cheater = Self Absorbed
Me, Me, I, I, My
The kids and wives are just fluff in their eternal quest for the next high and next ego stroke
That was a disturbing read. All the same, I do appreciate it when FWs hang themselves with their own rope.
Like some criminals who can’t help themselves and brag about their crimes.
“… I stumbled across and fell in love with my wives’ replacements …”
“Replacements”???? Like when the old washer-dryer gives up the ghost, you need a “Replacement”?
If your wives were not actually dead, you’re not supposed to be stumbling over their replacements.
“I saw things differently. ”
Stop! You’re killing me!
As CL says, we ARE just like appliances to them.
I have never “stumbled across” a replacement for my washer or dryer. When I “fell in love” with my next appliance, it was only because I was actively looking for it.
Exactly, it enrages me that these liars say “oh I fell in love” Like they had no control over their actions. No asshole you “fell in lust” because you made the decision to disregard your spouse to peruse your side piece.
You knew exactly what you wanted to do, and who you wanted to do it with; your spouse/family didn’t matter.
On Dday, Cheater told me “I won’t apologize for falling in love”. I believe in “intrigue at first sight” but not love, that takes time. He chose to entangle himself.
I was def an appliance to him
Right, and even if they did it is not an excuse to lie, abuse and steal from a spouse for years.
You fell in love, get out of the marriage; or at least tell the spouse hey I fell in love so from here on my attention will be on my new love. Then the spouse can make an informed decision.
But, then that is the whole point of the deceit, they need that spouse to keep the thrill going, or to hide who they are, or to have the money to romance the whore; they all have a reason and it isn’t to protect the spouse.
““Replacements”???? Like when the old washer-dryer gives up the ghost, you need a “Replacement”?”
Well sure, I always bought a new washer/dryer before they actually died. So I guess if you consider you spouse to be an appliance; then it makes sense.
//s
It’s a very good analogy. That’s really how they think; for instance, you probably didn’t feel like you’d do anything morally wrong by buying a new washer/dryer while the old one was still around. If someone had told you that you were supposed to wait for the old one to die (or at least remove it from the house) first, and then wait a few months before going out searching for a new one, you’d have thought the person was crazy.
Yes it was like he was writing a satire of himself… He can tell the truth clearly even if he doesn’t mean to…
Maybe this “spritual” guy needs to work in a retail establishment or own a store and tell us how he feels when violent thugs burst in and take everything. Guy like that would then milk the sympathy card forever, telling everyone about the trauma. This “guru” is such a stereotype, just like cheaters.
Meant this as a reply to Velvet Hammer.
I have zero sympathy for once-homewrecker turned O-Wives, turned “victim” of their “partner’s” subsequent cheating with another homewrecker…. Didn’t they get the memo that when a cheater marries their AP they create a job opening? Oh yeah, they thought they were too “special” to be treated like chump…. NOT.
Karma
I never heard of him but who describes themselves specifically as ‘ambitious’ (war correspondent)? Does he believe his own tag lines because he mentions ambitious more than once. Could he possibly have written this tongue in cheek to mock the ‘horn blower’ and/or himself? Because I cannot scrounge up any rational explanation for this self-reveal (but too little too late and no one cares why and your poor sons are cringing right now) blather.
“who describes themselves specifically as ‘ambitious’?”
My FW XW, for one, boastfully. I am pretty sure she regards this as her main virtue. Lost count of the times she scolded me for my “lack of ambition”, accordingly perceived by her as one of my major flaws.
I’ve been in bed, sick with a stomach flu, for the past 3 days. I was starting to feel a bit better – and then I read this.
Maybe I don’t have the stomach flu. Maybe I have the, “I’m sick of whiny, entitled, lying, using pieces of shit” flu. Fuckwit Flu. Jack Ass-itis. Call it what you will.
I’m going back to bed now. Someone please send me some much needed sleep. I think that 2 years of sleep deprivation and constant sobbing and mind fuckery has finally taken its toll.
ChumpMeGentlyWithAChainsaw, there, there, there. Shhhhhhhh. You are going to be ok. Here is a nice cold cloth for your burning eyes, let me fluff your pillow to the cooler side, just go to sleep now. You need your rest. Chump Lady and the UBT have this all under control. Chump Nation is keeping watch. Sending you some zzzzzzzzzs.
Lol, great response. Why can’t we do “likes” in here. Yes, I’ll shut up now.
Here you go. ???? ???? (((hugs)))
^^^^^
|__ what kind Saffa said.
It’s hard to take him seriously once you see the photos of the ring he gave Tess, a tiny copy of Princess Diana’s, and the magazine cover of him dressed in a tux, standing in water holding her in a bikini to replicate images from James Bond movies. Instead of looking suave and sophisticated, he looks just like Mr. Bean pretending to be Bond.
In Tess’s 2019 article, she wrote that she was fresh from the shower and opened their hotel room to find Debbie, who came in to reclaim her husband and his clothes. Brent wrote that Tess accosted them in the lobby, an “unfaithful man’s worst nightmare.” Both versions can’t be true. I suspect that Brent, the journalist, wrote fiction in today’s “story,” and Tess, the novelist, wrote the truth. He probably relishes the thought of two women fighting over him publicly, in a hotel lobby. Or maybe he’s confusing details with another of his ex-wives. Cheaters cheat, liars lie. The only thing I doubt in Tess’s article is her statement, that when Debbie arrived at the door of her five-star hotel room, Brent already “had gone down to reception to pick up an urgent fax from work.” Surely the hotel would have the staff deliver it. I suspect the desk, the wife or his work collagues (who gave Debbie his location) called to say she was on her way, and Mr. Award-Winning War Correspondent ran like a coward.
BTW, his handful of awards aren’t much to show for such a lengthy career, and perhaps his self-written article explains why. For example, he wrote, “when infidelity plays its part.” It’s not that he chated, it’s that dang infidelity showing up and taking over. Or this: “My journey through a field of landmines to reach my current state of happiness with my fourth wife, Jelena, was nothing less than surviving a war zone.” Did he have ANY any field experience with landmines and war zones? How insulting to the soldiers he covered, to compare their wartime experience, dismemberment and death to his past marriages. He also seems unable to count, and one of his marriages and ex-wives goes missing: he wrote, “as I once did with both of my ex-wives” and “I saw both my marriages as being in a terminal decline when I stumbled across and fell in love with my wives’ replacements.” Both is two, but if this is his fourth marriage and wife, has he completely forgotten one of his prior three?
Nope, he didn’t. He mentions his “first short marriage ended with little more than a whimper …with a duaghter,” followed by a six-year live-in relationship. “When those partnerships failed, there was no drama, no stress. And no bad blood,” he writes. No stress? No bad blood? According to the cheater who walked out on at least one wife and child? There was no stess on a child?
Amazing how between describing meeting his wife on a plane and the end of the flight, he interjects
“(Soon after, I became ITN’s award-winning correspondent in the Middle East — an upward trajectory that led to me being headhunted by CNN.)” Does he think the parentheses make him appear modest?
“Falling deeply in love yet again while already married may have sounded like another feeble excuse for what was rather selfish, unacceptable and irrational behaviour.” Yes, they do.If he loves falling in love and happy endings as much as he professes, why doesn’t he try harder to provide that for a wife, instead of an AP?
When he divorced Deb, “feeling the need to strike back, I encouraged Tess to do her worst.” Yet he complains that when he dumped Tess for younger and shinier, “She dubbed me ‘an insecure, attention-seeking emotional child’ in print and said I was nothing more than a man who ‘cheated and lied and who put himself before the needs of his children’.” That might be the child with Deb, since Tess wrote he apparently went no-contact with his then eight year old daughter for 22 years. How cruel and callous to ditch your eight year old, and throw away all your photos and videos of her–a box which Tess rescued and eventually gave back to the daughter and Deb.
Or as he puts it: “I was not so successful with Debby, and I blame her sniping for destroying any hope of having a relationship with Brooke, whom I have not seen since she was the age of two.” Somebody’s math is wrong. If she was eight when he dumped Deb for Tess, why hadn’t he seen his daughter for six years? Did he forget that, too, or is he confusing daughter Brooke with the first wife and child he dumped?
His conclusion, sadly, looks like another self-serving misinterpretation. His son Henry sees Brent “playing happily with Jelena’s two young nephews.” Note that despite 19 years of marriage to Jelena, Brent considers them HER nephews, not their or his nephews, so presumably he doesn’t consider himself their uncle.
“Henry knew what the youngsters could expect from having me in their lives and said: ‘I am jealous of the childhood they are about to have.’ Words I will treasure for ever.”
Henry knows his dad has a habit of vanishing from and publicly trashing people when he’s done using them. We don’t know if this story is true at all, but by Brent’s own admission, Henry didn’t say he’s jealous of the childhood they’re about to have WITH BRENT; that’s all Brent’s assumption. If Henry’s words are true, he’s probably jealous oft the childhood they’re likely to have with their parents who are NOT Brent, the man who went out of his way to make it clear that he is not their uncle. If Brent is going to be in their lives, that’s only because Jelena is. Brent chooses to present this story as if it’s praise. For a man who repeatedly tell us he’s an award-winning journalist, he’s blind and a bad writer.
I read 3 articles on Tess yesterday and in each one, it mentioned her birthday as a different age. And 2 of them were written by the couple themselves/
Kudos on your marvelous forensic deconstruction – and destruction – of this … “person’s” … version of reality.
Thank you for the compliment! My ex complained about this trait, too, which also was part of my job. More of ex’s gaslighting.
That spelling errors above and elswhere are all on me. Colleague, cheated, etc.
The, not that. Correcting my correction.
Unfortunately, I keep trying to look at that–what is it? Grin? Smile? Duper’s Delight?
I would say the unctuous ooze is from both ends.
I think the UBT died from a toxic overdose of boredom, with a secondary infection of pretentiousness.
For our newbies… these kinds of diatribes are textbook for narcissists.
There were many nuggets in here to glean:
– you never catch them on the first time… it is just the first time you’re catching them
– they cycle through relationships (typically on an eerily similar timeline!)… Mr. Sparkles runs on 10 year increments like clockwork
– it isn’t that they don’t/didn’t love you, it’s just that the love stopped (for them, whether or not they informed you is not relevant)
– they will never change, not even for the next “twu wuv”
– three channels of behavior: Rage, Charm, and Pity… this fuckwit is firmly stuck on Pity
Off to live another day in Mehtown… hard won location, took me four years to get here and No Contact (even with co-parenting)… and the diatribe above just reminds me… I didn’t lose anything except a cheater, and I gained a life.
Great summary, ICSTMC!
One point I go back and forth on, though, is whether he ever loved me in the first place.
Sometimes I think he had to because some of his early years behavior was so sweet that I said out loud to him that they were the happiest years of my life. On the other hand, he was lying to me about several important things from the get-go; can you truly love a supposed life partner you lie to and keep secrets from?
Not that it matters. It’s all just a skein now.
I hear ya H4Y… my takeaway from my marriage was that I was in love… I was experiencing full on, committed, honest, work through the stuff tough, building a future forever kind of love and I never felt that before in my whole life… and it felt great.
The debate on Mr. Sparkles returning my love has me in the “nope” camp. He is a special kind of NPD that basically mimics what he sees so any love I felt FROM him was really just a reflection back of the love I was showing him. He is puddle deep. He becomes the shadow of the person he is with, his own “self” is quite monstrous.
Celebrate the love you felt and brought to the relationship. That was real.
Thanks, Velvet Hammer! You wrote about meeting friend’s ex boyfriend, who “bills himself as a Buddhist teacher. We were having a discussion about organized shoplifting rings. I expressed my dismay. He actually told me “they aren’t hurting anybody.” One sentence and I am certain I need never interact with this person ever again. If you think it’s up to you to deem whether anyone else is hurt, you are not the spiritual teacher you think you are, and I don’t want an arrogant fraud as a friend. One sentence and I was done. Picker improved.”
Whenever I made similar observations (people who belittle and harrass waitstaff are bullies, putting personal purchases on your expense account is company theft) my ex, who calimed to have high moral standards, got very upset and claimed I was too cynical and judgemental. He repeatedly, out of the blue, would bring up and complain about this supposed “fault.” Until Velvet’s comment, I hadn’t realized this was long-standing and deliberate gaslighting. Guess who turned out to be an arrogant fraud who did far worse personally and professionally than anything I pointed out?
So this is what 72-year-old cheating men do?
They use a large media outlets platform to remind people that, before they sprouted copious volumes of ear hair and after their ass looks like an elderly white man’s flat, crepey ass, the women they were fucking brawled over them?
In print?
So this is what elderly cheating men do. Fight sexual invisibility tooth and nail and embarrassing confessionals.
Who’s fighting to suck his withered quill now?
No one. The answer is no one.
#erudite #geriatricbutcangetviagra
You had me at “withered quill” ????
Brilliant RossLucy!
PS Also wondering is this piece is actually an advertisement for Jelena’s soon-to-be-replacement?!
You had me at “withered quill” ????
Brilliant RossLucy!
????
*outlet’s
*IN embarrassing confessionals
what a humble guy.
i love the self-aggrandizing bits. “ambitious reporter”. “the woman who scooped brent sadler”. “award-winning correspondent”. and the details of his employment?
he looks smarmy.
what really gets me is how he numbers his wives. wife #1, 2, 3, 4. so personal. he’s probably great with emotional intimacy.
“what really gets me is how he numbers his wives. wife #1, 2, 3, 4. so personal. he’s probably great with emotional intimacy.”
The guy is a charmer, isn’t him? What a catch!
I can see why the UBT didn’t do the whole article after just reading it myself now. WOW!!!
No amount of lebkuchen could have revived it from that massive a load of mindfuckery. We would have lost it for good, we can’t chance that.
My mouth is still agape at the narrative that “award winning” turd wove with all the brightest shades of entitlement, cognitive dissonance, to circular victim blaming heights.
I guess he believes his own drivel?!
Well, I guess since he’s on marriage #4 and has blownup that many countless peoples lives, you surely would have to create a story that at least you alone can swallow for how fucked up that actually all is.
He paints himself above it all, could have saved relationships and made it so much more palatable if instead of the wives getting fully flame spitting pissed, his narrative could have calmed the seas and if they could only swallow his elephant sized DARVO pill, the world could be okay for them as he hop scotches off with no accountability or consequences to the next shiny object in his deep entitlement pool.
Just swallow it all wives, he’s so happy, isn’t that what love is all about? Making the incomparable Brent the happiest he can possibly be?!I thought that was everyone’s goal? Shouldn’t it be?
But he’s been with wife #4 for 19 years, longer than the total of the other three together he explains, so isn’t that the proof that he’s worked out all the kinks in relationships, having to permanently maim children and spouses to finally get Jelena, the golden ticket to his award winning image management plan?
His first daughter he hasn’t seen since she was two years old and she’s early 30’s now, but that is, of course, her mother, Debby’s fault, for not wanting to swallow the sludge he tried to create for her to digest. Eat it Debby, eat it!!
But the third wife, Tess, at least licks the sludge spoon of his slime and the eggshell walking awkwardness allows him to have a relationship with their two sons, which he views as such a massive benefit for THEM to have the highly accomplished, brilliant, dickfaced father figure in their lives.
(Probably for his high integrity, role modeling capabilities I’d be only guessing there.)
He talks about how he did his utmost to spend time with the two sons, Henry and Matthew through the years, which is a real sacrifice to juggle around the demanding infidelities,one can just imagine the tremendous effort that would take.
Brett then relays an incident he is playing with Jelena’s young nephews as his son Henry looks on, and imagining Henry reminiscing over how lucky he was that his dad made such efforts to keep he and his brother so close through the years. ( WTF?!)
And then he does the deep delusional dive into his own remarkable greatness and the last line in the article is,
“ Henry knew what the youngsters could expect from having me in their lives and said, ‘ I am jealous of the childhood they are about to have’. ????
Too bad the rest of the world doesn’t see your greatness as you do Brent, we could all then worship the ground you walk on like you dream of, wouldn’t that be a beautiful world for the only one so deserving of such beauty, that would be you of course, Brent, oh great one of planet earth, the award winning side of the planet.
How did he land four attractive women is the mystery that will never be solved in my mind.
I cast my vote for the sodomy and rhubarb custard ingested at boarding school, a more solid explanation is not plausible.
I noticed that in his article, his first wife’s name isnt even mentioned…damn…that is marginalizing. (and they did have a child together.
I was married young and I refuse all the dismissing that all young people dont really understand marriage. He is old and will never understand it
“I was married young and I refuse all the dismissing that all young people dont really understand marriage. ”
Exactly, I was married at 18 and I knew how to behave and how to commit. The fact that he didn’t doesn’t mean that no one did.
I had a baby at 19 and I took excellent care of him, I didn’t have my son too young. I had my son at 19.
I get that cultures change, and folks don’t generally get married as young as they used to; but it doesn’t mean those who went before us did every thing wrong; any more than it means those now are doing everything right.
I have read some of the books written by his ex-wife and the mother of two of his children. Because she’s a good writer she can skewer him occasionally and she does. I think someone up above mentioned that he and his new girlfriend moved across the hall from her and their two children. Isn’t that sweet? I have gone back and read the story of her marriage and divorce and how she moved on. It sounds like she’s done a pretty good job with her life. Married again another child. Continues to write. On the other hand I’m not British and I don’t know anything about him. I know he’s a serial cheater.
Somehow I came across some information about another guy who happened to be an anchor on the BBC. He started his affair with his coworker and left his marriage of something like 17 years. I think she just dumped him and now he’s moved on and married to someone else. It’s all just too too.
“But he’s been with wife #4 for 19 years, longer than the total of the other three together he explains, so isn’t that the proof that he’s worked out all the kinks in relationships”
No, Chumpasaurus45, Brent has not worked out any kinks. He has learned to tread lightly (after all, he is getting older and the need for a nurse and a purse is looming in the horizon) and/or Jelena is a humongous chump, very stupid or certain benefits are worth more than her honor.
“I found my fairytale” okay Cinderella. Glad your knighted in shining armour finally came to rescue your poor helpless wounded soul with her strong capable arms.
“I found my fairytale”
CRINGE! I’d be embarrassed to put my name on the kind of sophomoric bilge this guy writes.
Tracy, have you ever covered Christie Brinkley’s ex? He is an actual psychopath.
Billy Joel?
Not Billy. He’s just a problematic alcoholic. Reason for Christie’s divorce from him ?
Peter Cook. He’s now engaged to a 21 year-old. Super predatory vibes.
I hadn’t thought of Peter Cook (Christie Brinkley’s ex) in a long time.
From what I remember he has a history of 21 year olds.
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/christie-brinkley-peter-cook-july-4-hamptons-party-fiancee-alba-jancou
Oh Peter…The tan (is it natural or spray on ?) and Chiclet white teeth.
What? he lied??
She wasn’t 19 when they met, she was 19 and 1/2.
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/christie-brinkley-peter-cook-60-lied-younger-fiancee
They’re “soulmates.”
Wearing matching outfits…
Funny how the Personal Life section of Sadler only says, “Sadler is married to Dr Jelena Sadler, a former News Producer for CNN. He has four children from previous marriages.” Perhaps Chump Lady Nation can help flesh out this slim section for him?
“Sadler is ambitiously and award-winningly married to #4 or #5 (he couldn’t remember), a former News Producer for CNN, who was not as award-winning as he was. He ambitiously has four children from previous ambitious marriages, none of which were as award-winning as he was.”
“… all of which fell into immediate terminal decline upon his stumbling into the next replacement marriage/children.”
Celebrities and their antics bore me to no end. Aren’t 99% of them narcissists anyway?
Surely there’s something more interesting to discuss…
Could not agree more Sunny. Seems like such a waste of time, and intelligence to even give them space in your head. Being forced to see articles about the loser Kardashinan (black window spider doubles) in every paper I pick up disgusts me. The self indulgent, weak charactered, ” Royal ” is second on my list. I’m all for ignoring them, that hurts them in the pocket book which is what this all boils down to.
????when he retires from being a “war correspondent” he should try his hand at male romance novels. Both hilarious and repulsive.
I truly hope the UBT can recover soon. This narcissistic fellow tops the charts for complete and utter wanker. I didn’t get a whiff of accountability in that story. Thanks for posting this-it just confirms to me the cheater mindset and gives me the strength I need to get through the mediation I’ve got on Friday with my narcissistic wanker! It’s truly astonishing how similar they are.
This sentence says it all, huh?
“I saw both my marriages as being in a terminal decline when I stumbled across and fell in love with my wives’ replacements”
He openly admits to viewing his wives as appliances in need of replacements, and avoids all accountability for his poor relationship skills and cheating. The selfishness, entitlement & lack of empathy is on full display here. I hope all his many exes are thriving, free from this idiot.
Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to be ambitious war correspondents.
This old has been is comical in his ability to slip his credentials into a timeline. It’s like those wikis you sometimes read of minor celebrity writers or actors where they slip their awards into the biographical section instead of just list it in the table at the end, plus they editorialise their accomplishments as though they know the person, because of course. Brett/Brent is a creaking dinosaur from a bygone era.
It makes me sad to think of all the women he must have made suggestive remarks to or inappropriate something or other.
Emma C, the below comment comes from a reader of the Daily Mail article. What a creep.
“Ok and one more thing. I was in the supermarket here in the Gold Coast (Woolworths Broadbeach if anyone’s interested haha) and there was a man following me around and staring every time he could. I noticed because it was extremely blatant. Just very full-on. Anyway I scurried out when he wasn’t looking(had a bf and even if I hadn’t – he’s really not that hot in real life I assure you. Fairly small. And obv creepy, I did not enjoy it). It wasn’t until I got home that I realised it was this guy. So I doubt this was the first time he cheated”
By all means, read Wife #3’s story about her relationship with Sadler. She provides a very familiar narrative for how one comes to fall for a FW and then get chumped. Here’s how it begins:
“I had no idea Debby was still in the picture. Brent, then 41, and I had met just six weeks earlier, on my 21st birthday, in July 1991. He’d told me he was legally separated from Debby, then 31, a former air stewardess, and asked me to marry him just four days after we met. I quit my job as a TV producer on News at Ten, and moved with Brent to Cyprus, where he was ITN’s Middle East bureau chief.”
Now, he said he was legally separated but not divorced so it’s disingenuous at best for Tess (Wife3) to say she didn’t know Wife 2 was “still in the picture.” But look at his pattern:
She was 20 years young.
She was hooked 6 weeks after meeting him. He asked her to marry him “just four days after [they] met.” Lovebombing.
She quits her job to follow him to Cyprus (shades of Desdemona…).
Once in Cyprus, he isolates her, as he did Wife #2: “No one else understood what it was like to be married to a man like Brent. In common with many TV personalities, he required a massive support system, needing to be the centre of the domestic universe. Everyone else’s life had to be put on hold when he was around. Debby gave up her job as an air stewardess, and I quit work for ITN to pursue a writing career that fitted around Brent’s schedule…..But as soon as we’d each had a baby, and couldn’t spend all our time catering to his whims, he looked for someone younger who would. He travelled for ten months a year, but got jealous when we created a life that didn’t include him. We both shared instances where he’d raged because we’d thrown parties while he was away. He had difficulty with Debby and me keeping in touch with friends from before our marriages, and seemed to try to drive a wedge between us and our parents. Living in a foreign country, cut off from everyone while he travelled all the time, was incredibly isolating. It made us vulnerable to his moods, and dependent on staying in his good books.”
And finally, the discard, once she’s pregnant with a second child: “Then, in 1997, when I was pregnant with our second son Matt, now 21, I discovered Brent was having an affair with his 25-year-old Serbian translator Jelena. In July 1999 we finally separated on my 29th birthday, eight years to the day since we’d met.”
It bears repeating: “But as soon as we’d each had a baby, and couldn’t spend all our time catering to his whims, he looked for someone younger who would.”
*20 years younger.
Sorry for the typo.
CL linked the article but here it is again, for convenience, since I had to self-reply anyway:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-6981607/Tess-Stimson-woman-Brent-Sadler-left-Debby-wont-believe-happened-next.html
“Is it palsy or did he accidentally drink his own Mickey?” Thank you CL for the morning laugh, even though I had to change my top from spitting coffee out of my nose????
Ha ha. When you Google him, the image box for images show Tess and Debbie’sphoto from Tess’s article.
And when you go to his website, you see pages of self-serving photos and articles. And this quote:
“I never imagined that I would become an international television correspondent when I started out as a cub reporter for a local newspaper in Britain. It just happened.”
It just happened? Because he’s so great and talented that the world had to notice?
Looking at this, Tess is just deluded. Debbie looks like a decent woman, and Tess is super-lucky that she even deigned to be friends. That one of her clinging to Brent in a bikini is just so cringe-worthy. She’s still in love with him. And she’s still shopping it around atm, this year she’s still dubbing herself ‘the ex-wife that won’t shut up’ and shopping an article around. She really has a lack of insight, that she was the OW to begin with, then got all huffy that he did the same to her. Talk about centrality, how about moving on and forgetting about what a POS he is?