UBT: ‘They are all deep connections with different colors’
Hi Chump Lady,
I read your book right after D-Day, lying on the floor, to stop myself from feeling like I’m falling. At the time, it felt like a big joke, like this is normal cheaters, but my husband is different. I didn’t follow any of your advice, like quietly shoring up my finances for the divorce. Nevertheless, your book was a guiding light for me throughout the whole ordeal. I reread it a month ago and amazed how every word was true and applied to my situation. My husband was just a run-of-the-mill cheater with a character deficit.
A short version of my story: Found out last year, accidentally, that my husband had been having an “open relationship” for years with another woman who was doing the same. He basically messages every woman in a 200 mile radius on this dating site and ushers them through a sales pipeline. He shares stories of his great sexual adventures with his main AP, who he still insists is “only a friend.” I’ve felt gated out for years, and I’ve been suppressing my gut reaction to things that looked like cheating. I trust him and just thought that he was just being too close to his female friends.
On the first D-Day, I found intimate messages of him and this woman, talking about me in a rude and invasive way. On subsequent D-Days, I found the trails of his online dating, tons of graphic dating profiles, hundreds of women, a lot of conversations about me. In his own words, he was a very happy guy, with a great job, a girlfriend that he shared everything with, and a perfect life with his perfect wife. I did the pick me dance for a few months—it was hell—until he randomly blurted out that he refused to give his AP up. I kicked him out and filed for divorce. For the most part, I’ve only contacted him regarding divorce proceedings.
A few days ago, I randomly came across greeting cards that he made for other women on our computer which is now mine. They were quite graphic and went back further than I had thought. Some were dated within a few days of my miscarriage. He made a “get well” card for his AP because she was recovering from a cold. Meanwhile, I soldiered on and worked through the emotional trauma of my miscarriage alone. I broke no contact and told him that disclosure would be good for both of us. And the email below is what I got.
I know I’m not supposed to give weight to the words of a delusional person, but so many things he said just got under my skin. Like he said he didn’t tell me about his double life because I was suicidal, and I said, did you also think about that when you actually chose to cheat? In reality, I had mentioned off-handedly that I thought about suicide once in college. I went to a high-pressure Ivy League school where that shit was real. Another thing that stings was his accusation that I was emotionally abusive, because I tried to break up with him the few times he waved giant red flags. Me giving him a second chance is now recast as emotional abuse. His lying and gaslighting and trying to coerce me into an open marriage after I found out about the cheating are now recast as him carrying me along. His “love letter” was all about him—he loved me so he wrote me a manual to meet his needs.
I know I need to discount his thoughts and feelings, but I don’t really know how. I’ve lost all respect for him, but I loved him every day for many years and on some level, loving him is a deeply ingrained habit that I haven’t managed to turn off. I’m so sorry for subjecting you to my long email and his even longer one. But if you have a UBT for this, I would really appreciate it.
Thank you!
Hà
(Editor’s note: What follows is an attachment of such lengthy, lugubrious bullshit, I can only abridge. The UBT is a mere machine.)
****
Dear Hà,
Never feed the fuckwits.
I told him that disclosure would be good for both of us. And the email below is what I got.
You got a kick in the teeth. Was that good for you? No, of course it wasn’t.
He’s not an honest broker. He’s a creepy, disordered man with a double life. You know enough.
Read that again. You. Know. ENOUGH.
The pipeline. The sales channel. The 24/7 deception.
You can’t process it all right now. This shit is incredibly traumatic. But asking him for MORE details is just giving you more abuse to work through. He is NOT going to love all your hurt away. He’s a freak with a double life.
Okay, you love him. It’s a habit. Blah, blah, hopium snort, blah. You can break that habit. Everyone here broke that habit and you will too. In fact, some day soon you’ll be embarrassed that you ever knew him. Why? Because he is MORTIFYING.
You’re this articulate woman with an Ivy League degree and he’s some yammering New Age buffoon with a wandering dick. He’s unworthy of you. Now, get back on the no contact wagon. Anything you have to say to him can be said through lawyers.
Tracy, what’s in that attachment?
Gooey, New Age blameshifting.
I mean, I have to give the guy credit for being prolific. Most cheaters peter out after a few grafs. But this guy is the bullshit Dostoevsky. The UBT cannot take this kind of volume.
That said, it hasn’t earned any Lebkuchen lately, so I’ll toss it a few choice sentences. Trust me, I’m sparing the rest of you.
You have burnt many bridges. You expressed that you wish to burn this bridge as well, so I´m singing my song one last time for you. From the deepest of my heart I wish you can hear at least some of my voice.
I am a fat lady with an aria. You are an arsonist and a Philistine.
I wish you appreciate at least some of my profundity.
I have lost many people as well, some just lost, some dead. It´s part of life. Every wind gust carrying my fathers ashes in my hand to the Ocean made me grow a little. Even more debilitating is your fear of neglect. When a baby doesn´t see mommy it´s life threatening. You´re a grown woman, you can and have moved mountains and you know it. You’ll be ok.
I am not a pathetic loser. I am a wind gust of personal growth.
You can move mountains. So shove aside this enormous pile of bullshit.
I don’t know if you can imagine how deeply it stings when the woman you married and have been with for over 15 years tells you, that you don’t care if she kills herself. Please don’t say that to anyone ever again.
I don’t know if you can imagine how deeply it stings when the man you married and have been with for over 15 years gaslights you to the point of suicidal ideation.
(Excuse me. The UBT is having technical difficulties. Belching up empathy where none exists.) WHACK!
I am scolding you for the emotional abuse I inflicted on you. Heck, I probably crafted this line into a few dating profiles. My wife is a suicidal nut job. Only you can suck my dick and save me.
I would like you to watch this (first 3 Minutes is enough). There is a relevance that I would like you to try and see. Even most of the lyrics are relevant to us. It’s a first audition of a shy 14 year old girl from Hamburg at one of those casting shows. Watch it before continuing to read please. https://youtu.be/aHMgX1F5fCs
I am a shy 14 year old girl from Hamburg. I have a gift, but no one suspects my greatness.
If you think this analogy is preposterous, continue to read please.
When she opens her mouth, that 14 year old shy girl drops all chains, opens her soul and fills the entire hall with her energy. Grown men, professional music producers lose it and jump up and down like children. That´s what happens when you open up, put your soul out and are willing to see, hear and feel. Without judgement, without fears, prejudice, without expectations…
A single look in the eyes and you know. Sometimes total strangers with cultural backgrounds that couldn’t be any more different. Immediate heart warming and goosebumps because souls see each other. For a long time I hid from it. It wasn´t appropriate. I didn´t know how to handle it. I don´t want to hide any more. The little Patrick boy in me that will never grow up and sees with curious eyes and an open heart and wakes me up in the middle of the night, I won´t ignore him anymore. I now know you can’t hear my voice. I now know you can´t see me for what I am. You see a few colors. I have many more.
I must be free to live in technicolor! Without judgement! I see souls! And rainbows! My dick is untethered and I won’t ignore him anymore.
#goosebumps
I hoped one day you could see them all. I hoped one day you could see past the shell. I wished one day you could drop your chains. But you can’t.
You were suffocating me. I wrote you a love letter years ago, a literal manual for Patrick and cry for you to see me. It went unanswered and unused.
Why won’t you read my manual? Are you the sort of person who just tries to assemble Patricks without reading the instructions? They’re written in Swedish, and all the screws are on some foreign metric system and you could spend your whole day trying to assemble a Patrick and it’ll still be a cheap particle board partner.
Anke is my ex-girlfriend. None of that makes any difference. They are all deep connections with different colors.
Leave me to fuck the rainbow. Farewell.
Glory be and save us. What a sociopath. Thank God we didn’t have to read the whole thing.
Run, Ha. Run like your hair is on fire. There’s nothing to work with here.
No Contact, and a very good lawyer. This is probably going to be a bumpy ride.
Probably also a good therapist who can help you put yourself back into focus?
I’m so sorry, but he’s really something else. And I don’t mean that in a good way.
LG….I chumpy laughed at “Run like your hair is on fire!” I’m adding that one to the arsenal of things to do when other chumps ask what to do.
Ha, be proactive in protecting yourself! You don’t have to put yourself through that level of BS and pain anymore so don’t even open the can of worms that can lead to it. The best thing is No Contact/Gray Rock and no reaction when you do find out something fucked up. Otherwise, you were looking at tearing open the wound over and over again which only causes you more damage and prevents healing. Give yourself some peace.
Lola, what a great phrase: “put yourself back into focus.” That’s exactly what “gaining a life” has been all about for me. I was so hyper focused on XH after Dday before I went no-contact that I literally could no longer read, enjoy food, visit with friends, watch tv. The trauma does that to us.
Thank God I’m free and regained my life. It took time and a lot of years of no-contact.
Me too. For the better part of the year after I got the “I’m divorcing you because you are a bad wife but I’m not cheating (except I am cheating)” speech, I thought of nothing but Cheater.
If I were doing something normal or working, I would go off on my own to ruminate about him. I cried every day for a long long time.
(The day I learned his betrayal had extended for years/decades, I didn’t shed a single tear)
Oh honey, he’s a creep. I get it that you still have some love for him because you were together a long time but it’s going to die as you stay no contact and heal. And then you’re only going to be able to feel disgust and wonder wtf was I with him?!
My ex also had so many female friends, he was just such a “feminist” you know. So many of them became my friends over our 20 year marriage and so many of them were fucking him and laughing at me behind my back. Super not fun to find out. He was cheating on me before we even got married, it was always a joke. I was alway just an appliance.
Your ex thinks he’s poetic. He thinks he’s enlightened. He’s a fucking perverted moron who is a slave to his genitals. If you need to dig through stuff to find the truth to see that, that’s ok. Some people will tell you not to but finding out the truth really helped me. Of course you won’t get it all. I don’t know everything either. But I know enough to be disgusted by him and that’s really all you need. He wrote nice get well letters to his fuck buddy while you suffered through a miscarriage alone. Hold that one in your head. He’s disgusting. Your best friend or close relative comes to you and says their partner did that, imagine it, how does that make you feel? Angry? Does it make you hate their partner? Treat yourself like someone you love and feel that outrage.
And after all that awful stuff he did to you, he’s now calling you an abuser? Yeah, mine did that too. Some people will say the anger is bad but letting myself get angry and be angry really helped me. I’m a couple years out and not angry anymore but I’m thoroughly disgusted by him and want nothing to do with him or any of his gross little groupies. Don’t contact him again, you have enough here to digest and see him for what he really is. Just work on healing and let it sink in and you’ll accept it. You’re going to laugh at his letter eventually because he really is pathetic and ridiculous. Just hang in there and don’t give him the chance to kick you again.
“He’s a fucking perverted moron who is a slave to his genitals.“
Omg – how this phrase resonates. I am truly wondering if Evil FW may try to use some sort of sex/porn addict defense at his upcoming CP trial.
I have no idea how many people he f*cked (nor do I want to know), but he definitely is compulsively led by that drive to get a brief, emotionally empty, cheap thrill of genital contact with complete strangers.
KatiePig, a “feminist” that abuses his wife. Only a true fuckwit could see logic in that. Heaven help us.
Agree that the more I knew about my fuckwit’s goings-on, the more I just felt disgusted and embarrassed I had actually married that pompous, shallow excuse for a man. And the more things he tried to blame on me, the more evidence I had that what he said was not true at all.
Há, this letter is nothing but information about his character. Use it well.
“My ex also had so many female friends, he was just such a “feminist” you know.”
Mine too. I never had an issue with them, until OW. That one felt different. When I expressed my discomfort with her, my ex told me I was paranoid, controlling, and jealous. I asked him if I’d EVER had issue with any of his other female friends and he had to admit that I had not. I was not a jealous or paranoid person. My ex insisted this woman (who acted like she was my friend) was “just a friend”. He stuck to this story for over three years. Turns out I was right all along, and they had been romantically and sexually involved almost from the beginning (met in May, a “thing” by July, fucking since that September).
My ex also turned on me and said I was emotionally abusive. Apparently me having post partum depression and trauma from a difficult birth was abusive because he didn’t get laid every day. Withdrawing somewhat because he was abusing me verbally on a daily basis, insulting my post baby body, and later showering all his attention on this little piece of trash (which all led to me not particularly into having sex with him) was abusive. He had “no choice” but to cheat (he literally told me “what else was I supposed to do?”).
Getting angry was good for me. Because my ex was abusive, it was never safe for me to get angry when we were together, so I had a LOT of anger to process after I was safe and away from him. It doesn’t last forever, but was a great motivator for getting free of him and clearing all of his groupies (this is a great term) out of my life.
My sociopath ex had tons of female “friends” and very few male friends. The few male friends he managed to make, he seemed to quickly fall out with. Never his fault of course lol.
The women got sucked in by the sparkle and the attention he lavished on them. The men, I believe, identified him early as a dishonest, disloyal fuckboy.
No same sex friends = red flag.
Great point. My FW has no male friends, no one to talk to about what kind of a man it makes him, that he would blow up a family to go pursue sex with strangers.
He told me once during final discard that his goal in life is for every man he meets to feel anxious that he could steal their woman, that he would be able to if he tried. I was like, well, THERE’S your problem, in terms of making friends with other men. Why would they want that? But he just didn’t care, getting the women to want him was “winning” and that’s all that mattered.
One of these days he’s going to do that to the wrong man, and I won’t be around to mop up. Hooray! Thanks Chump Nation & Chump Lady!
Same in that my FW always had many female friends though I usually felt ice cold toward them for some reason I didn’t initially understand… probably gave credence to some of his ridiculous rationalizations of me being ‘cold’ in the bedroom – complete lie. He’s the uptight control freak. Sorry I’m in an angry stage.
Yes, don’t be sorry about being angry. I’m still angry at the shit the XW did to explode our marriage and family (yeah, I know, it’s very easy to see from my posts ????). I use that anger every day to propel myself forward in my life. For better or worse, that’s where I’m at. For better or worse. Ha ha. That was me in our relationship, for all my faults. When I stopped being a good enough husband appliance (depression, diabetes, leaving high stress job to keep myself sane), that was it. So to paraphrase one of my favorite book quotes, “fuck her eternally.” Ha, you weren’t the problem in your relationship. Him, and his shitty character coupled w/his wandering dick was the problem. You go shine. Sending you lots of love. We’re here for you.
Don’t be sorry. Anger is a gift – ride the wave until you are done with it.
Finally I have become angry and pissed at him.
Just wow. Run. Even on this website little Patrick’s technicolor grandiosity stands out. No contact. Lawyer. On Tuesday you’ll be so grateful to be safe and free.
His ramblings remind me of the flowery internal monologues of Humbert Humbert from Lolita. It wasn’t the first or last time that Nabokov gave a demonic character pretentious speech. I don’t understand why some literary types say Humbert is a “relatable/likeable monster.” The character is repulsively pompous and in stark contrast to some of Nabokov’s sympathetic protagonists like Krug from Bend Sinister who’s gruff and blunt and has no patience for the flowery, empty meanderings of the dictator Paduk or Paduk’s euphemizing minions. Paduk is also cast as a demented pervert as it happens.
I think it’s interesting that Nabokov surgically distinguishes empty meanderings from obscure but valid intellectualism when Krug defends (among others) the tragic character of Ember, Krug’s harmless, sincere Shakespearean scholar friend who’s so deeply specialized that his theories are nearly impossible to follow.
Maybe Nabokov is nodding in his grave at the UBT’s take on “Patrick” as a nauseatingly florid freak.
Nabokov cheated on Vera.
John Banville’s got his number:
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/hidden-in-full-sight-1.214606#:~:text=The%20one%20known%20affair%2C%20and,he%20subsequently%20fell%20in%20love.
I love the chump-checking here. I think it’s long overdue. I didn’t know that about Nabokov. I don’t mind if he was a peacock. Artists need armor, particularly controversial ones. But cheating? Ugh.
Margaret Atwood’s quip that “Wanting to know a writer because you like their work is like wanting to know a duck because you like pate” is funny but it could be taken as an instruction that we’re not allowed to judge the characters of artists. I don’t agree. Russian composer and survivor of Stalinist purges Dmitri Shostakovich wrote in his memoir “Testimony” that “nothing good ever comes of a rude man” and went on to trash the work and character of Toscanini for nearly an entire chapter. Toscanini was cruel to the point of proudly driving members of his orchestra into cardiac arrest. His flying monkeys applauded him for it and critics seemed to believe that his awfulness was proof of his genius. But Shostakovich didn’t think Toscanani was a genius. He wrote that the music Toscanini produced was a “hash.” So Shostakovich broke the cardinal rule of the arts which is to never try to equate character with artistic ability or sensibility or to think one affects the other. He went on at length on the subject, bringing up example after example, including taking a hatchet to the popular myth that Nazi higher-ups were “cultured” simply because they listened to Wagner and Mozart. To Shostakovich this was merely a pose.
I read that book years ago and I’ve thought about it a lot. The way I reconcile the fact that, say, Picasso was a prick but at the same time among the most talented artists of the twentieth century is that he could have been better had he not been a prick, if he’d strengthened his humanity, etc. He was prone to ferocious depressions. He might very well have been disappointed in himself because he fundamentally understood justice but was a hypocrite. Same was true of Nabokov. He took the head off some VIP for making an antisemitic crack. But yet he betrayed his Jewish wife in his own way. What more could he have produced if he hadn’t? What new height to Arthur Miller fail to reach when he rejected and denied the existence of his son with Down syndrome?
We used to have a comment for this type of sociopath “He’s so full of sh*t, his eyes are brown”. He is so psychologically unstable. Do not waste another moment on him. He was not worth your love. Please talk to a therapist to help you understand why you gave so much of yourself to someone who was so unworthy.
My eye-roll is as epic as his vapid words.
I’m surprised I didn’t stroke out reading his bullshit.
Nothing like creating an imaginary little kid to pawn off your transgressions on. What evil lady would deny innocent “little Patrick” his moment to shine?
Of course the truth is always laid bare between the lines of this world salad – Getting dating site floozies to service his “little Patrick” is all he really cares about.
Brings to mind a couple of lines from the Eagles song Get Over It:
“I’d like to find your inner child
and kick its little ass…”
If I were still talking to this guy, I’d send back Get Over It.
Oh sweet hell. I hate these assholes. I’m so goddamned tired of cheater stink, cheater logic and cheater word salad. This bullshit is the result of expecting the disordered to be normal. This is what you will get every time you make contact with that fuck.
Dear darling Ha’, please never ever, ever, ever contact him again. Closure is a gift you give yourself. It has nothing to do with Mr. “Anke’ is my girlfriend”. Closure is yours when you purge your life of anything to do with him. Be done with him.
I am so sorry that he is an unrepentant asshole of a cheater. He isn’t going to change. But you can.
“Closure is a gift you give yourself.” Thank you for that!
“Expecting the disordered to be normal.” This. Yes. This is what gets us all. We treat them like they are healthy and normal and somehow we just are not understanding. But they aren’t normal and healthy. It took me YEARS to understand this.
I just commented on this to my friend a month or two ago. We were discussing the XW and her AP (now 2nd husband) w/a coworker of my friend’s, and my friend wondered why the XW and AP weren’t stepping up to help my son more w/college (our youngest) and I told her and the coworker, “We can’t expect people like them to behave like us. They’re not capable of it.” Or something close to that.
And yes, it took me at least three to four years after D-day to stop trying to understand why neither of them would act as I hope I would. Finally realized what a waste of time that would be; expecting them to think or act like me morally, emotionally, etc. Fuckwits gotta be fuckwits. Just keep them the fuck out of my life. In a year and a half, my son will be eighteen. I’m hoping that will further decrease my interactions w/the FW XW (already at heavy grey rock). I can only hope. But no matter what, I’m moving on w/my life, as fuckwit-free as possible. May we all be as fuckwit-free as possible. God knows we deserve some peace. Meh and Tuesday , here we come!????
Took me years as well. Someone commented yesterday about the cheater’s inability to grasp nuance, and it reminded me of how it always was with my fuckwit ex. I must’ve had quite an imagination to believe we ever shared intimacy or connection. How I attributed any amount of depth, compassion or maturity to that fool is beyond me.
One of my biggest mistakes was “expecting the disordered to be normal.”
Holy shit. I am so grateful for the chumps’ stories and the UBT.
What seems to be the classic narcissistic cheater is actually every cheater. My ex was chatty but had little emotional intelligence and didn’t burden me with his explanations. I really benefit from understanding (again) cheating has everything to do with entitlement.
Fortunately, we all know where to find the “off” switch on the mindfuck blender. No contact.
Yes! This oozed entitlement from every consonant and vowel. “I’m such a super special snowflake and you, in your drab ordinariness, cannot possibly properly gaze upon my countenance and see my greatness. I am PATRICK, don’t you know?? I deserve to fuck strange. And you, in your boring, provincial views, could simply not follow the manual I gave you to understand PATRICK and his entitled, wandering, super special dong.”
What an asshole. Probably one of the worst CN has seen. Run Ha. Run fast and run far.
Yes, he actually wrote a manual for Ha. Or thinks he did. What a moron. Ha, you are going to feel better and better w/out this asshole in your life. You just have to let yourself. If you do, you will see that all the things you are sentimental about regarding him are only coming from you. He was never capable of the caring nature you possess. It’s hard to accept, but once you do, it explains so much, and you start to realize just how lucky you are to be away from that person and out of any “romantic “ relationship w/them. The only love and romance came from you. He/they fake it. They do not understand it. They just try to imitate it. Sometimes it seems real. But it’s just a mirage. And we deserve better. They deserve their shitty, fucked-up life. We at least were sincere in our love for them. They can’t understand that, and probably never will. That’s their hell, and they’re welcome to it. Focus on YOUR future. That’s what matters now. Good luck, Godspeed and feel free to talk to any of us. We’re here for you.
Talking about himself in the third person…I feel like you could know that alone about someone, and know so much…
Like I mentioned earlier, the child molester character in Nabokov’s Lolita refers to himself in third person quite a bit. I even found a page online listing all his self-references: “Humbert the Bel”, “Humbert the Hoarse”, “Humbert the Wounded Spider”, “Humbert the Humble”, “Humbert the Hummer”, “Humbert the Hound”, “Humbert the Cubus”, “Humbert the popular butcher”, “widower Humbert”, “friend Humbert”, “Humbert the Terrible”, “high-and-dry Humbert” and “floundering Humbert.”
Patrick the Parochial Perv. Patrick the Prurient. Patrick the Putrid. Patrick the Pretentious Priapic Peckerwood.
????
What a sociopathic douche. Run. Don’t look back. Hugs to you.
Run like the wind. Run as if you are training for a marathon. But run!
Good God! I could not read it all. Drama baby much? No contact with that sociopathic mess. He’s delusional and dangerous. I’m so sorry you were exposed to that.
It took me so long to learn that I could never, EVER have a real, earnest, sincere conversation with the man I married ever again.
It took me a long time. And a lot of conversations.
“Me giving him a second chance is now recast as emotional abuse.”
Stuff like this really hurt. I, too, gave my cheating spouse a second chance. I forgave him for so much. I tried to show him that he was the only one for me, etc, etc. I just wanted my family together.
He retells it in a way where I am either a villain, at the most, or simply an obstacle to his true happiness, at the least, and he had to heroically launch himself out from under my thumb.
He won’t even call it an affair. He won’t apologize for anything because he really doesn’t feel he’s done anything wrong. (He’s only sorry for the “way it all happened.”) I don’t even get the “closure” of an apology.
That’s what talking to a cheater gets you. It’s beating your head against a brick wall. The brick wall is just fine but you leave the conversation in pain. Pain that it takes a long time to recover from.
No contact. No contact is the only way. One of the hardest lessons I’ve ever had to learn (slowly) was that I could never, ever have a true conversation (in person, email, whatever) with the man I married ever again. Not if I wanted to stay sane.
Fourleaf: There is no such thing as a sincere, etc. conversation with a cheater, unfortunately. Cheaters lie and there is no such thing as an honest, sincere conversation with a liar. I know you know all this. We all thought our cheaters were honest, etc. from the beginning. Then when we found out otherwise, there was hopium, surely they really wanted a second chance and would be so grateful that they would not hurt us again. We hoped and they hurt us again. The best to you.
“You have burnt many bridges. You expressed that you wish to burn this bridge as well, so I´m singing my song one last time for you. From the deepest of my heart I wish you can hear at least some of my voice.”
She gets beat up for giving him a second chance, she gets beat up for leaving him…classic abuser.
He *expects* us to be friends. He was like, “I’m friends with all my exes.” Ergo something is wrong with *you* if you don’t want to be friends. He doesn’t see how his cheating and failure to come clean are the things that burned down that bridge.
My FW has a very similar attitude, that he’s just so special and all his loves are equal and it’s so provincial and vanilla to expect that a marriage ceremony and raising children together for over 20 years would make me special. And he did the same thing about being friends!
He announced that our “romantic relationship” was over, but informed me that we were now good friends and drinking buddies and in fact would be having a great time at a casino in three days, so I should get over it fast. Totally astonished to find out that I get to decide if we’re friends or not. He thinks he’s such a catch I would be grateful to touch the hem of his garment from an adjacent bar stool. Where the children would be during my time as his wingman while he’s trying to set up that strange pipeline, was not mentioned. Getting out and accepting he’s disordered and will never act right is the only way to get to Tuesday.
The two cheater moves post breakup;
1) I want you to be my my friend so I can still manipulate you.
2) You are the enemy so I will destroy you.
You can let him know you choose your friends better.
Just more gaslighting and coercion to get what he wants. Hell, it worked on you for over a decade (or more?), why wouldn’t it work now? He will never change, *you* have to change, for there to be change (in this situation). He “sees”, he just doesn’t agree. Get it? He is a selfish, creepy, lying piece of shit…time for *you* to “see”.
You forgot “entitled.”
In other words… he fails to understand your hostility. Which is super convenient for him, right?!
My ex recast our brief wreckonciliation (which, btw, was HIS idea) as me manipulating and strong-arming him into taking me back out of guilt and trying to break up him and AP. You can’t even with these people.
My ex “apologized” for “everything that happened with [him] and [AP]” and then went on to justify and excuse everything. I got angry halfway through and simply walked out. The fact that he had told AP, whom he had known for only a few months at the time and who was a coworker of both of us, personal (VERY personal) medical information about me without my knowledge or permission was kind of the last straw. His timeline of what had happened between them was also inconsistent with the facts that I knew, and when I questioned him about the discrepancies he got angry. It was no apology at all, just a series of excuses. Apparently I left him no choice but to cheat on me because I was such a horrible wife (LOL).
I learned (the hard way) that anything I said to this man would be twisted and used against me. So I stopped talking to him other than necessary logistical or financial information, mostly related to our child and our house, which we co-owned. Once I stopped engaging with him and let go the need for an apology or explanation, I started to truly heal. I eventually realized that an apology would change absolutely nothing for me. I found my own closure, and didn’t need anything from him or AP (who also “apologized” after she broke up with my ex, but it wasn’t an apology at all and I never replied to her email – it was one of those “IF I did something, then I apologize”; she didn’t actually own anything she did).
My closure is that I will NEVER understand why these people did what they did, because I am not like them and therefore what they do will not make sense to me. That’s all the closure I need. They suck, they are not good people. They have no conscience, no integrity, no compassion, no standards. I do. That’s all I need to know.
This. You can’t even with these people, exactly. They live in a fantasy world where they’re the star of their own show.
If FW had accused me of breaking up his affair just out of spite while knowing all along I intended to dump him anyway, I would have winked and laughed. Never mind that it was his blame-reversing hysteria in casting me as some kind of Shiva who would tear the AP’s life apart that insured the ho stayed gone once she knew I knew, my much more serious motive for hoping that shitshow affair would end was that I didn’t want the creepy bar fly AP anywhere near my children. So I would have been fine with FW telling people the former as free PR to de-emphasize my remaining chumpiness. It’s like putting a home security firm sign on your lawn when your alarm system is actually just a very small dog and a cowbell on the back door. I keep joking that all the bitchery I was accused of in the DARVO stage just doesn’t seem bitchy enough in retrospect. The time I really wanted to high five him in the face with a brick is when he faux-stoically confessed to a friend that he had had an affair and that it had “hurt” me. Ew. Him advertising his narcy centrality struck me as even more of an offense.
Who’s Patrick? Is that his pet name for his dick? I’m so confused.
Her husband – but yeah, he is a dick so it works both ways!
This guy is NUTS! Some serious issues. Why does he refer to himself as Patrick? Can’t he just be normal and use I or must he talk about himself in the detached manner because he is so special? Something is definitely off here?
You need to get rid of this nightmare ASAP! Get yourself a lawyer, take in all evidence, all financials and get a good settlement and be free. No contact is what you need to recover. He is incapable of loving. He just wants to spread himself around to everyone so they can bask in his wonderfulness.
Don’t worry about him calling you a n abuser. That is part of the cheater’s handbook. They love to put their crap on you. My STBX (less than 45 days now before he becomes us EXHOLE) did the same, even accusing me of cheating!!!!!! Nope sorry, he must be living in an alternate reality. Yep, projection. Everything they accuse you of ois what they have done to you. Get rid of this shit and find a real life. Being alone beat being with a cheater any day!
My ex accused me of abuse as well. But he had not a shred of evidence (because there wasn’t any), while I had ample evidence of his abuse and infidelity. What they say is not important to the courts. The court wants evidence.
He also accused me of cheating (while denying his own affair). Which was hilarious in a way. I was a 27 year old virgin when I married him. Clearly fucking every random guy I meet is my modus operandi /sarcasm/. I got really upset and told him that it was really hurtful that after all the years he’d known me, that he would think that of me. It’s all projection. Every time I didn’t answer a text right away, or answer the phone, he would accuse me of being out with a man. Every time I got my hair done, did my makeup, or wore something nice, he accused me of doing it for a man (like women don’t ever do things for themselves). Even when I told him where I’d been or what I’d been doing or who I was with, he accused me of lying. What that tells me is that when I couldn’t reach him, or when he told me what he was doing and with whom, HE was out with AP, HE was lying. It’s projection. I still haven’t even gone on a date, and he died six months ago. I’m just not interested in dating right now. I’m enjoying my peace, freedom, and autonomy too much. I’m not lonely. He couldn’t conceive of being happy on his own. For him, being alone was terrifying. Hence the “monkey branching” where he had to line up another woman before he could leave me.
Whoa. Now that’s some high level word-salad blameshifting.
Doesn’t sound like he sees your colors, Ha.
He ain’t who you thought he was.
Why does it bother you? Hard to admit we were conned by a user. Once I accepted that, I became stronger.
Leave this turd in the rearview. He’s an idiot and an embarrassment. That’s not on you.
It’s both mortifying and cathartic to see my story in the light of day. Thank you.
Ha, Thank you for your courage and strength. I broke no contact for a month (I’m mid-divorce), and I’m now spiraling into emotional flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, insomnia, and God knows how many other symptoms. My idiot’s lies and flowery language echo your idiot’s letter. Tracey is right to call it trauma. I’m beginning to understand that any contact with these barbarians — akin to beasts without conscience or empathy — activates my “trauma mind.” Trauma throws my amygdala into overdrive and shuts down my left brain (logic). I am still living as a threatened animal. He trashed my reality, my trust, my expectation of how life operates. Of course, I’m traumatized! (Have you read Omar Minwalla? Sexually Secret Basement? Trauma). Nurture and protect yourself from this crazy. I experience glimmers of Zen, but CL and CN assure me it’s going to take time to regain complete function. The thought of never having to be spun around in circles by him gives me comfort because my poor mind cannot take it anymore. Who treats another human like that? My thoughts are with you.
Oh yeah, we all know the feeling… Cheaters should be the ones who are ashamed but we all know that’s not going to happen. Hopefully one day you will be able to look back and laugh at it, or at least shrug.
It’s indeed a powerful combination, and can get you on the road to truly gaining the life you deserve. Lifting up the log exposes the rot, but is necessary for new growth to begin.
I think we all feel that way. It’s embarrassing to think I didn’t see the FW for what he was, that I spackled so brilliantly for so many years. I am so grateful to the CL and CN for providing a space where we can pour out our stories and have them received with empathy, understand, and excellent advice.
CL discussion also prompts new and disturbing insights ~ e.g my ex also referred to himself in the third person. I’m thought it was a joke (sorta not really) that had continued from his childhood where he referred to himself as “The Great (insert fuckwit name)” to his FOO. I realised after DDay and a whole host of “you must worship Patrick” moments that he actually believed it. A narc hiding in plain sight.
This: “In fact, some day soon you’ll be embarrassed that you ever knew him. Why? Because he is MORTIFYING.”
Today is my 7-year chumpaversary! The final D-Day after which I threw him out, although I still spent 6 months fighting through the gaslighting and trying a short-lived wreckonciliation. At the time, I still loved the lying, cheating, emotionally abusive douchebag. Now, I wonder what I ever saw in him in the first place.
Life is so much better on the other side. Thank you, CL and CN.
Hà – someday you’ll be glad you never have to listen to his rambling wackadoo bs ever again.
Better Days, I echo everything you write! I’m four years out this month. Life is indeed so much better on the other side, though we can’t fully see or believe it until we get there.
This guy doesn’t see you or other people as people at all.
They might as well just be colours. When he gets sick of a certain shade, he just walks in another room.
People respond to him with adulation or he can’t relate to or understand them.
Damn these people with these vulnerabilities and attachments.
So instead of realizing the trauma he’s inflicting on others, “it’s just part of life.”
Gross. I find people like this completely awful as friends and partners.
Are you sure my narc ex didn’t write that? He wrote similar verbal vomit. I only saw things in black and white (he was also crafted of many colors) and suppressed his freedom too. Barf. It’s been 2 years complete no contact so I no longer know where his wandering dick has wandered.
cheap particle board partner.
good one, CL!
He must be related to the BTK Killer. Who was married, with two children. President of his church congregation. Who wanted to be a police officer. Who was a good person who did bad things. According to himself.
No.
Good people do not intentionally do things they know will hurt other people. Bad people knowingly do things that hurt other people and lie, keep secrets, craft
double lives, and do nice things as a cover.
To wit, yesterday in the business meeting, my general manager referred to Traitor X as a “nice guy”. My COVID mask kept my jaw from falling open, but my eyes gave me away. This guy knows Traitor X cheated. And I found out recently he is a cheater himself.
Yes, I am sewing my golden parachute to get the F out of this situation and waiting for the moment to pull the ripcord.
The Craigslist cockroach, and anyone else he was screwing around with, are nothing but walking talking living breathing dick sucking brown-nosing ass-wiping solid proof that he is not a nice guy. Tough to internalize when the mirage evaporates, but breaking denial is a very different dynamic from being a secret side F who knowingly picks a cheating person and colludes with abusing and violating the chump
in the dark.
Cheaters are BTK killers too. Betray Torture Kill. A new nickname for Traitor X. I don’t use his name. I use nicknames that remind me who he is to keep the mirage dispelled.
There are a lot of people in the world who are willing to chug the Kool Aid and I don’t want to be one of them.
VH,
Unfortunately It has been my experience that many men tolerate cheaters. I have been in plenty of situations where a person’s fidelity issues have come up ( business and social) and the other men around me minimilized it. In fact the group I was with hired a cheater against my recommendation and what I said may happen did happen. What a mess. I have always seen cheaters as being very flawed people. If they are bad enough to betray their family how can they be trusted? As my buddy told my son’s scouts troop, ” once you become a pickle, you can’t go back to being a cucumber”
Velvet Hammer, if you know your general manager is a cheater – that’s a nail you need to pound. That knowledge is a powerful weapon in your personal arsenal. Sit back and think on it. You don’t need to act immediately; you’ve got time to refine your revenge. and I promise you, it is the most empowering thing you can do in such a situation. Got a work culture of cheaters and enablers? Take them down.
GM is on marriage number two and revealed he had cheated on his first wife. That marriage was many years ago, long before he worked for us. I have no idea what the status is with No. 2. He told me this when Traitor X and I were divorcing. His rationale? The marriage was going south. As if marriages go north when you cheat?
I think of BTK often. How everyone around him was totally shocked. His hours and hours and planning and working to keep his secret life secret. Definitely a covert narc. Fuckwit could have murdered me, I see now that I could have been in great danger and not ever known it. And my adult children would have testified that he was a great father and great person. They would have pondered what I did that caused him to have to murder me.
So scary to see things without the hopium mask.
This is so chilling. My ex hates his former company. He would rail at how abusive the company was and how he was always treated unfairly. Yet he stayed there for 19 years. While I was married I thought more than once that if he sent a letter bomb to his old workplace, I wouldn’t have been surprised. Other people might have described him as quiet and unassuming, but I knew better.
Reminds me of the stack of handwritten letters I recently discovered while clearing out my mom’s estate. Letters from my dad. 1970. Flowery paragraphs of sadz. No mention of the waitress, the secret second family he was traveling with in his job, etc. He pontificated about a contract he signed, his monumental sacrifice to his family – a contract with the devil in order to spare my brother’s life (he nearly died as a young child). My mother needed to understand that his life was no longer his own, how tortured he was that he had no choice but to leave us behind with nothing…..the devil and all, you know.
Fuckwits. Generations of fuckwits. Maybe chump nation can finally bust up their nastiness. Flipping over the rocks and shining a bright light on them.
What is it with these fuckers and prolixity? The more words the less truth. The best answer? “You’ve been served”.
This has got to be the biggest bunch of Bullsh*t that I have read in a long time….Did he take a handful of magic mushrooms before writing this??? He is so delusional and full of himself I don’t know where to start.
Please, please, lawyer up, and get ready for a fight. Once these people get found out it is ‘gloves off’. Get to a therapist quickly with someone who understands sociopathy to help you process this abuse, and remember you did nothing wrong. This is such a shock to your system, I remember those horrifying days.
A therapist trained in PTSD helped me the most.
Me too. My therapist made it clear that what I had lived in was ABUSE and that I was traumatized and had PTSD. Her words: “You’ve been living in a war zone”. She gave me permission to feel angry, and assured me that I had every reason to be and it didn’t mean I was a bitter person. The fact that I had lived in fear had prevented me from being able to feel or express my anger for years, so I had a lot to work through. And that it was normal for the PTSD to only show up after I had gotten out. She said that my body/mind wouldn’t allow it until it was safe for me to do so. It all made so much sense.
Oh girl. I also thought my husband was different. I guess we all do. I get it that loving him is a habit but as more and more pieces of the puzzle start falling into place you will see him in a different light snd your feelings for him will change. You will see him for who he truly is and not the fake he was to you.
This. Loving someone alone, habit or not, is not a relationship. Both people have to be invested to make a marriage work. Relationships take reciprocity. You loved him; he didn’t love you (evidenced by action, not word salad) therefore cheating. Get out and go no contact. He can take his sparkly rainbow dick elsewhere; who knows where it’s been. Mask is off. You don’t want it anymore. So sorry hun, but you can kick the hopium with enough time, distance and better other things to do like putting yourself and any kids first.
Gosh, as my young adults would say, what a sick weirdo. Close that chapter.
I went no contact partway through the divorce negotiations per my attorney’s recommendation. He was writing a draft agreement and said that he’d Fedex it to my STBX with a letter that he was taking over once we got it done. My ex was pro se at the time and had written his own cringy agreement that my attorney said was the work of a terrorist. I didn’t share the details of the divorce with our then-college students, but I explained big picture aspects like that because they were concerned about me. I literally gave them a paragraph at most at every turn. They both also went no contact that day and have remained so, three years later.
I chose to respond to emails during closeout because I felt much more confident about dealing with him and figured why pay an attorney to deal with things like pictures and car titles? My attorney drilled me on the BIFF method from Bill Eddy and tutored me on what was safe to discuss via email and what was not. Oh, my! My ex was on a rampage still. It wasn’t long before I had a standing phone call with my attorney every week because my ex was playing yet more legal games and trying out all kinds of psychological warfare.
I kept to BIFF and became a pro at brief responses to only the legal matters. Finally, after we got the most critical parts done, we dropped the phone calls and just put out fires. They finished their part. Then his attorney contracted COVID and died. Once again, my ex was pro se which brought about yet more crazy. My attorney and I figured out though that I was pretty good by then at handling things directly with my ex via email, so I’d check with my attorney and then hit send. My attorney did one last phone call on what might come up and how to handle it myself and when to call him again. We closed the file. There was indeed a flare-up, but I handled it myself.
Almost five years now since he took off, he still thinks he’s a wonderful person that should have a relationship with our adult children. He never really apologized to them, and he accuses them of character flaws that led to the break. I’m guessing that he still believes that I alienated them, which is just bizarre. They didn’t even want me bringing him up at all for the longest time and still don’t want his name mentioned other than in passing. I’m not sure how anyone can control college kids who are away all day with classes and working with their own email addresses and cell phones anyway. Just weird.
If only all cheater knew how unoriginal they really are…
Take all these letters, make a big pile in your garden, put the Patrick manual on top and set it on fire! Dance while you watch it burn because you will never have to read or listen to any of this nonsense again! Or take the hard drive a smash it with a sledgehammer, whatever feels right.
Divorce that ass, you’re free!
Sorry for all the typos… typing while insufficiently caffeinated this morning.
A manual on “how to love me” is not a love letter. This guy is really confused, creepy, stupid, cruel, and definitely not worth your time.
Tracy, you ought to have a UBT website where ALL of these missives can be housed in all their glory. A place where normal Chumps can display their FWs nonsense manifestos.
Do. Not. Engage. There is nothing productive to be gained from asking “why” from this FW. Their brains are disordered. Do you ask your morning coffee cup why it lets your coffee get cold when you went to let the dog out? You would get just as meaningful a reply. As in, it does not matter one iota and should not affect your life. Grey rock is the only path to sanity.
dear Ha (i can’t figure out an accent, it’s too early), soon you will have a more objective eye and see this word salad for what it is. colourful word salad.
i’m going to be straightforward here and say the following: Patrick isn’t very bright. and, although he likes to refer to all the colours of the rainbow when talking/thinking/shagging, think of him as flat black-and-white because he is as two-dimensional as the chalk outline on the floor of a murder scene.
as i said yesterday, the biggest turning point for me in the process of recovering from this shit show (17 months since my D-day) was realizing my X does not have the capacity for love. he just doesn’t. there are reasons for it and that’s for him to sort out, if he ever does. but he just doesn’t have the capacity for love. realizing this helped me move along in the grieving/letting go process.
i will also say that, going through the legal process of separating/divorcing, i see clearly that my X isn’t very bright, either. his ego and sense of entitlement cloud his judgment and there are things he has said/done in the past year that are straight-out stupid. realizing this has also helped me move along in the grieving/letting go process.
let go of Patrick and his amazing technicolour daydream. he’s not worth your time/effort. you’ve got a life to live.
“I will also say that, going through the legal process of separating/divorcing, i see clearly that my X isn’t very bright, either. his ego and sense of entitlement cloud his judgment and there are things he has said/done in the past year that are straight-out stupid. ” LOL, mine was too. My lawyer and I used to be in awe of how stupid some of the things he did/tried to do were. He thought he knew better than his attorney and it was obvious that most of the letters/documents ostensibly from his attorney were actually drafted by him. His complaint for absolute divorce was 12 pages long and basically laid out his entire case of how he planned to discredit me, mixed with about 80% straight up lies about me. My lawyer could not believe that any attorney had actually signed his name to such a ridiculous document. I had expected to be upset reading it, and I ended up actually laughing (and saying WTF? a lot) because it was so crazy.
I also came to realize that my ex didn’t have the capacity to truly love and that he didn’t recognize love when he saw it. For him, love=abject worship and adoration.
Mine actually thought that the alimony he owes me would end if HE got remarried, because it would end if *I* got remarried, so it’s only fair it would work the other way too, in his head. Like if he replaced the appliance with a new one, surely no law would expect him to pay for the old one too. Which explains all the ads for mail-order brides that kept popping up when we shared internet during in-house separation. Just really didn’t think any of this out very well. Too busy seeing all the colors of the strange.
Super sized side order of nuts, anyone?
Get well clear of that head blender.
Thank God I didn’t read while eating. I would blown lunch for sure. What a disgusting creep. As many others stated run from this sociopath and don’t look back.
One of the funniest UBT’s I’ve read CL..
“I must be free to live in technicolor! Without judgement! I see souls! And rainbows! My dick is untethered and I won’t ignore him anymore.
. “My wife is a suicidal nut job. Only you can suck my dick and save me.”
I haven’t laughed this hard in a long time.
Thank you..,
Wow. I relate to this so much. As I write this I’m sitting on my new couch drying my tears. Ex was just here picking up the old couch with a cute young helper. The old couch is going to his place, which is also an event space for mostly young folks (he is 50 btw), lots of weed and mushrooms (all provided by him of course), very queer friendly safe space, music, stoned yoga, art nights etc. It’s just lovely!
He’s a real community builder for the youth…. It is wildly painful for me.
ANYWAY, after they drop the couch off they’re going sailing with 2 more women. How do I know what his plans for the day are? I asked. I keep asking and he keeps telling me. And now I’m sitting here crying and trying to get myself together for therapy followed by a doctors appointment to run some tests on my deteriorating body. And he is sailing with 3 women.
I’m trying to laugh at it too, because it’s so cliché, but my laughter is a bit hysterical.
I’m still in love with the FW and I’m so angry at myself for it. It’s ridiculous. I’m unbearably sad. Asking questions only cause more pain. I know enough. I know plenty.
Why do I keep allowing myself to be kicked in the head then? I feel like I need to UBT my brain.
Access to weed and mushrooms does not a community build. Sounds more like he’s a groomer.
Lost, I’ve read most of your posts. I think I’m at the same stage as you, time-wise. Your words mirror my experience. I’m in treatment for severe trauma and domestic abuse. I’ve learned after seven months that no one is going to rescue me from this horror nightmare that is now my life. The man I trusted for 30 years, this upstanding “straight arrow,” is rubbing all of it in my face, sailing and screwing women in my home — in the home we chose for retirement. I am shacked up in an apartment, miles away, in my sixties with no discernible plan yet for the future. But I have to look the other way, or sadly, I am enabling his abuse. As others have said, this animal with whom you allow in the door is licking his chops and ego at your expense. You are feeding his ego with your grief, and therapy will only give him another hard-on, ego-hit, power & control boost at your expense. I too have contorted myself in grief, trying to get a bit of compassion out of his sick self, but this tactic has only increased my despair. Yes, it is unfathomable. But you will only feel better when YOU put an end to his game, when YOU stop his abuse. Gosh, I’m new here, and I hope that doesn’t sound in any way like blame-shifting because that is not my intent. He is a cruel, sick person. No honest, decent human being would rub that stuff in your face. You don’t need a damn communications plan. You need to say, “You will not speak with me again until you get your sorry ass into recovery for intimate partner violence and abuse.” Find a trauma therapist. Read about complex trauma. Find your anger. Sadness is no longer your friend.
Your advice doesn’t sound like blame shifting at all, liberated. I appreciate your advice.
I need to look the other way too. It just feels impossible. I can’t see clearly at all but at least I can see that I can’t see clearly. I saw my therapist today and she said she saw my progress – 6 months ago I still wanted to be with him and now I want to be someone who doesn’t want to be with him. It’s a small step but she’s right. I do want to be that person. I just don’t feel like that person as of yet. She also echoed everything said here about going to a counselor together. We did have a good belly laugh because he told me he made our appointment for 2pm so he would be able to go to yoga at noon beforehand.
That’s nice….
I’m sorry you’re going through this. I pretty much hate sailboats now.
Sending support right back to you ❤️
I will come back with one more comment and then shut up. What I found that really helped me with no contact was blocking him in all ways shapes or forms (adult kid). I insisted everything go through the attorneys (yes it cost more but once Fuckwit started seeing his bills mount up, he kept word salad to a minimum). They bill in six minute increments and his lawyer asked for reaction from my attorney on any of the FWs long laments. My attorney would just glance over it and would forward to me if anything was needed. Most of it was only worth a laugh and required no action. FWs try to do that for attention but as he got bills in his rantings through the attorneys ceased.
This will keep you no contact and you won’t have to respond to bullshit. So for what it is worth. It definitely helped me to minimize dealing with him.
Why are you thinking that such a dickwad is worth your love?
You are absolutely snowed by this con man.
This guy is a fraud. You’re in love with an illusion.
First step to recovery is to go no contact.
Second step to recovery is to go no contact.
No contact
No contact
No contact
clears your head and gives you some space so that you can see the jerk for who he is.
No shame. You can open your eyes now.
Do you have a therapist? My therapist really helped me get out of the place you’re in, where you have a need to know, and are still in love. Don’t be angry with yourself. Normal people love and can’t turn it off like a light switch.
The thing that helped was going no contact. Don’t ask anymore (it’s hard, I know, so be gentle with yourself). If there are possessions that need to be dropped off/picked up, find a third party to oversee it and don’t put yourself in that situation. An exercise to help with the “I still love him” is to write out in detail all the things that he has done to hurt you. When you feel heartbroken that he isn’t with you, read yourself the list. And understand that you are grieving a loss – the loss of the person you thought you were with, the person you loved. THAT PERSON DOES NOT EXIST. Grieve that person like a death.
Your physical health can be VERY intertwined with your emotional health. When my ex left me and I had not yet gone no contact, I was extremely sick. I dropped to a dangerously low weight, I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, could barely get out of bed, came down with pneumonia regularly, and while I was still married and being abused daily, I had gotten sick with a rare lung disease that normally affects only the very elderly or AIDS patients. I was a mostly healthy 35 year old woman at the time. My immune system was completely worn out from the constant stress of my terrible marriage. Once I went no contact, got therapy, and sought medical help for my depression, anxiety, and weight loss, my health steadily improved.
It didn’t help me to beat myself up for loving my ex, or for engaging with him even when I knew better and knew it would only cause me pain. What DID help was physical exercise (I ran, and I am not a runner) – it improves sleep and appetite, and is a good distraction from the revolving hamster wheel of the brain by forcing you to focus on your body. It also helped to simply try to add good things to my life. Was there something you didn’t do while you were with your ex because he didn’t like it? Do that. Take the class, read the book, watch the movie, see the friend, go on the trip, do the craft, go to the restaurant, whatever it is. The more you add to your life, the less time and energy you’ll have to worry about what he is doing. And don’t resist the idea of medication, if your doctor thinks it is a good idea. Getting on an anti-anxiety medication helped me through the worst of it, and helped me have the energy and clear-headedness to do what I needed to do.
It does get better. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. I don’t love my ex anymore. He died last year, but even before that, I stopped caring what he and his AP did. I started living MY life.
Hang in there. You are going to be okay.
Lost, it takes time. You’re likely trauma bonded like most chumps. Look at it this way; who you are in love with is the person you thought he was. Who he *really* is, nobody could possibly love because he is a vapid non-entity. A walking, squawking lie. An ego with a pulse. So you don’t actually love him, you love a mirage.
If you don’t let him come over and don’t talk to him, there will be no temptation to ask him anything. If he needs to pick up his shit, get a friend or relative to be there instead of you.
Yes, I so clearly know that my behavior (being here when he comes over, asking any questions) is damaging, and yet I can’t pull myself together at all. It is definitely trauma bonding, and yet I can’t force myself to go no contact. We have a kid and 2 adult step kids. We are very much twisted together.
We’re going to our first counselor together next week to work on our communication problems as we navigate our separation and coparenting. I have a feeling that the only person who needs to change is me, though, and I find that really frustrating. I need to see the mirage. I need to do the work. It’s just crazy hard to make yourself fall out of love, even if it was a fraud. Maybe even harder?
Lost, I can so relate, I lost myself, too. These users get us so wound up in whatever ‘they’ are doing, and that’s a big part of the game. See, we weren’t playing a game, but they were. We were loving and authentic, and I’m sorry to say-we got conned. When I really accepted that, I started to pull away, and heal. Give yourself big credit for being REAL, in the face of a big con!
Any attempt to work along with them, such as counseling together, is only going to hurt you. I know, it’s so hard to shift gears to being a hardass, but that will serve you best.
Truth, OFFS!! It’s a trap, which is the name I have for X in my phone! ???? Just to remind me, that I’d better get my shields up, who knows what he’s trying to pull?
Lost, it takes time but it also takes no contact or grey rock. That will be the only way you can even begin to heal from the betrayal. Is it hard? Yes. Will you mess up at ties? More than likely. Can you do it? Yes you can but you have to be willing. You will not get answers or closure from a Fuckwit. It will not happen. If you get an answer it will be a weird word salad that makes no sense or be some type of blameshifting. You don’t need that. You need counseling alone. When you can handle it then you can do a co-parenting type of deal but right now you need to minimize exposure to a FW. Trust that he sucks!
Oh no no no no no! This is a trap. Do not go into counseling with a FW. He will only use it as a way to further manipulate you, get you puffing on Hopium and blaming yourself. This isn’t a communication problem, it’s a one of you is an asshole problem. You can’t solve an asshole problem together. The asshole has to solve it himself, by not being an asshole anymore. Learning how to better communicate his outrageous demands only benefits him. He won’t listen to what you need no matter how well you comminicate.
I beg of you, don’t go. It will delay your healing and make it even harder to let go of the mirage.
Look, most of us have kids with our FWs. Some chumps even share a business with their FW. But you don’t have to be entwined with him and can rearrange your life accordingly. You’re telling yourself you can’t disengage and can’t get over him because at this point you don’t want to. Until you really want to, you’re still going to be under his thumb, so going to counseling is downright dangerous. Also, don’t forget that many counselors practice chump blaming. FW then gets reinforcement for his POV and you get unwarranted guilt, confusion and paralysis. Resist!
Yes, I wish I could sue the three “counselors” in a row who refused to simply say that infidelity is abuse. They did real damage to our family by convincing FW that he did nothing wrong, and there’s something wrong with *me* for believing I was abused by him.
I hear this. I hear all of you and I know it to be true deep down. At least I’m trying to know it.
Allow me to play devils advocate for a moment, knowing full well what my feedback here will be.
I know that my pain is caused by being lied to and gaslit for 7 years of his cheating. I know that’s not my fault. He is not attempting to blame me anymore. He has, what seems like, a really excellent therapist. He is working with me on a generous and fair settlement, which could have been (still could be, potentially) very complicated because we are not married. He is not contesting common law. He is not trying to wreckoncile, he is not forcing our teenager to spend time with him but is working to rebuild their relationship on her terms. He is taking as much of my pain and anger that I can throw at him and it is a lot. He is saying he needs boundaries though – this is, of course, infuriating for obvious reasons but also, it’s true. I need to let go, and the only person who needs to change now is me. Is this still me being gaslit? I’m not so sure? FW says he is doing everything he can to be here for me because he is worried about me, I’m still his best friend, mother of his child, raised his other kids, “blah blah hopium snort blah.”
I know – I’m still on the pipe.
But what if there’s a couple’s counselor unicorn? One that focuses on moving forward in a healthy way? Could this exist?
And thank you to everyone who responds to me. Gosh I’ve felt like a broken record on here for so many months. I can hardly believe what a mess I am. I appreciate your support so freaking much.
I can’t wait to change my user name!
Even if you had the best counselor in the world, who made him take responsibility for his abuse, and got him to say all the right things, how could you ever trust that he would mean them and follow through? And if he did seem to be following through, you already know that he’s an amazing liar who could lead a double life and you would never know. This person is not your friend. They’re not anybody’s friend. They don’t know how to be a friend. Friends don’t lie to each other.
Lost, if your child is a teenager there is no earthly reason for you to ever speak to him again. Teens can and do communicate with others most of their waking hour s by that little device they have glued to their hands. You will not heal if you have to continue to be exposed to the FW on a regular basis.
You’re untangling the skein here. Take all the energy you spend figuring him out and apply it to yourself. It’s the shift we all have to make, from focusing on them all the time to focusing on ourselves, but it’s one of the keys to getting to Tuesday and meh. I had various mantra I used, which changed as I got better at stopping myself from giving him any of my head space. The last one was “It doesn’t matter, it’s in the past.”
I hear you Lost. However I second everyone saying that’s just impression management on his part. Ask me how I know. He just wants to appear like the good guy who “tried everything”, “went to counseling” and “gave you everything you wanted”. Are you being gaslit and manipulated? What do you think? If you think you have to give joint counseling a go, go nuts. Sometimes the only way out is through, but I foresee a lot more pain for you. Maybe that’ll be the fuel you need to light a fire under your butt, it was for me. To each his own. However make sure you’re also getting individual therapy, otherwise that can really mess you up.
Good luck!
You don’t need to move forward with someone who lied to you for SEVEN years. You’re his “best friend,” but he’s stabbed you right in the back while you raised his children!? Oh, hell no. This entire line of thought is in your head because you have not yet gone no contact. You will think very differently once you resign from the job of orbiting around him.
You do not not not not NOT need counseling with him. He’s an illusion. There is nothing you need to collaborate with him about. Save yourself.
One other thought when you say ” He is working with me on a generous and fair settlement” – I hope you mean his lawyer is working with yours! If you are trusting mediation, or taking his word on everything and not going through financial discovery, you may be getting screwed over without realizing it.
Often when these types are out of character “nice” it’s it’s because they are playing you like a fool.
Yes to therapy – for yourself only.
The line that sticks out to me: “He is saying he needs boundaries though – this is, of course, infuriating for obvious reasons but also, it’s true. I need to let go, and the only person who needs to change now is me.”
I can see where you are getting twisted up so I’ll shout it. YOU DON’T NEED TO CHANGE. You need to grieve. You need to process the crimes this man committed against you, and you can’t do that with him the room.
If someone mugged you walking down the street, you wouldn’t want to sit in a therapists room with them and work out issues together. What he did (lying to you for seven years, risking your life by potentially exposing you to STDs, and stealing marital funds to spend on ow) is so much worse.
The only “moving forward in a healthy way” is getting yourself into therapy, and keeping conversations with him to a bare, just the facts, minimum. Model self-care and self-love for your daughter ❤️
Lost, My ex acted the same (like a really good guy who takes responsibility and sign a postnup)and it was all part of his impression management. It was NOT genuine. Please get your own therapist so you can work through this on your own. When you frame, “I know that’s not my fault. He is not attempting to blame me anymore” as him being a good guy you are missing the point. The point is the earlier sentence; “I know that my pain is caused by being lied to and gaslit for 7 years of his cheating”. Yes, this is the only fact you need to know. You are seeing him through a bizarre lens of trauma bonding that you call love. This guy is not your friend and he is messing with your mind. Please please get a therapist just for you. Hugs.
Maybe stop and reconsider……no joint counseling sessions. You are dealing with an abuser who flippantly destroyed everything you loved and worked for. There is no “joint.” He bombed his relationship with the children already. They need their own counselor to support them through this.
You deserve 100% of a counselors attention, session after session, so you can work on saving yourself. “You are no longer responsible for him.” You are no longer the wife appliance. His choice.
He can make his own counseling arrangements and viagra appointments when he gets back from his fuckfest.
Oh no, don’t go to counseling together Lost! I did it, hoping for “closure” while he wanted to work on our “communication”. I just sat every week listening to how I didn’t understand how awesome FW was and how traumatic his childhood was (not at all…). And the counselor did nothing. It was pure torture and cost $$$. It was just a way for FW to force me to listen to his BS. It just delayed my recovery and filing for divorce. Don’t do it!!!
“It was just a way for FW to force me to listen to his BS.”
Yep, plus to enlist the counselor’s help in manipulating you.
My FW wanted us to go to counseling “to prepare for a future reconciliation.”
What could I do but laugh at his delusional chutzpah.
“Why won’t you read my manual? Are you the sort of person who just tries to assemble Patricks without reading the instructions? They’re written in Swedish, and all the screws are on some foreign metric system and you could spend your whole day trying to assemble a Patrick and it’ll still be a cheap particle board partner.”
I see what you did there, CL! As a born-and-bred Swede (though U.S. resident since the early 1990s) I applaud your IKEA reference. And assure you, and Hà, and all of CN that even a handy person fluent in Swedish would have little success with “The Patrick Manual.”
How do I know? Because I labored with a similar manual for 4 years.
I met the Lying Cheating Loser on just such a sex site as I imagine Hà’s ex and his AP were using to flaunt their “open relationship” and attract new supply. I was on it as an honest broker (insert facepalm), newly divorced, not emotionally ready for a relationship, just looking for casual sex with someone who was also single.
And yes, I was way more gullible and naïve than an intelligent, 45-year-old woman had any business being.
I’ll spare you all the boring, pedestrian details of spending 4 years with a lying, cheating, mooching, selfish, immature, abusive, toxic sociopath. They’re all the same anyway.
I just want to hit on a couple of points: open relationships don’t work with a character disordered partner. They WILL find ways to violate every relationship-safeguarding boundary you agree on . Their main payoff isn’t sex with other people, it’s getting away with lies. Hà, be glad you didn’t go down that rabbit hole.
Second point: Hà, it sounds like you’re less than two years out. I would like to offer you a perspective from 4 years out, which is where I am today.
I left the LCL for good in May 2018, after many, many breakups that didn’t stick. Like your FW, he labeled me abusive.
Leaving was the biggest heartbreak of my life (or so I felt at the time). The LCL represented my last hope for a lasting relationship, and I loved him like crazy (I use that word intentionally). When I left, I felt devastated yet stoic. I felt like I was amputating a limb, and that I was going to be able to have some kind of life post-FW but that it would be a life forever impacted by the trauma and loss. I felt like I would love him forever, notwithstanding my knowledge of his massive fuckery (and we will never know all of their fuckery. The pit is bottomless.)
For two years afterwards, I was smoking hopium, being “friends” with the LCL, still spackling over the obvious cracks and flaws in the particle board human that he is.
But then, little by little, my fake-it-till-you-make-it new life began to eclipse the one I’d left behind. The LCL took up less space in my brain. The fog began to lift and I saw the abuse clearly in ways I previously couldn’t.
I began having vivid dreams that the LCL and I were together again and APs were coming out of the woodwork. It’s like CL writes – you can’t truly process the trauma until you’re safe.
Hà, it doesn’t sound like you have kids with your cheater. And I am so sorry you had to grieve your miscarriage alone, I know what that’s like. But if you didn’t breed with a FW, you dodged a nasty bullet. They’re crap as parents anyway, discarding their kids as callously as they do their spouse appliances.
So, what is life like 4 years post-FW? I don’t love the LCL. My overriding emotion when I think of him is “ew.” His life is, predictably, a dumpster fire. And I have some schadenfreude about that, but after what he put me through, I feel like I earned that.
I’m continuing to process my trauma, which is why I still read CL, but I’m not walking through life like an amputee. I’m walking through it like a battle-scarred warrior queen who has retired to a peaceful life full of cats and plants and art. I wake up happy and at peace every day, and go to bed the same way.
Hà, you won’t love him forever. Your post-FW life will blossom. The FWs suck up so much of our focus and energy. When we eventually are able to take that energy back and give it to positive things, miracles happen.
No kids, thank god. No house, either. My divorce process is fairly simple, even if getting him to sign took a while.
“I’m not walking through life like an amputee. I’m walking through it like a battle-scarred warrior queen who has retired to a peaceful life full of cats and plants and art. I wake up happy and at peace every day, and go to bed the same way. Hà, you won’t love him forever. Your post-FW life will blossom. The FWs suck up so much of our focus and energy. When we eventually are able to take that energy back and give it to positive things, miracles happen.”
^^^^
OMG, I love this. Beautifully said. I had no idea how much of me he took (time, energy, money). My life is so much better without that drain on my resources.
“For two years afterwards, I was smoking hopium, being “friends” with the LCL, still spackling over the obvious cracks and flaws in the particle board human that he is. But then, little by little, my fake-it-till-you-make-it new life began to eclipse the one I’d left behind. The LCL took up less space in my brain. The fog began to lift and I saw the abuse clearly in ways I previously couldn’t. I began having vivid dreams that the LCL and I were together again and APs were coming out of the woodwork. It’s like CL writes – you can’t truly process the trauma until you’re safe.”
^^^^
This is so true. I had a very similar experience/timeline.
Just when I thought I heard it all. Wrote a manifesto about how to love him? *Bullshit de Balzac.
ExWifeOfSparkleDick had a great idea, suggesting that Tracy start a UBT website for all these letters. I will add the song my ex, who professes to be a pacifist, wrote, performed and posted on a music website. It’s about an armed man chasing down someone he despises and plans to shoot, and resolves when he’s standing over the person and decides the person is not worth shooting. With it, he posted the comment that the song describes peaceful conflict resolution that everyone should try. I made sure I gave the link, a screen shot of his comment and the lyrics to everyone I thought should know, including my attorneys, law enforcement, Child Protective Services, his therapist, friends, and the psychologist who evaluated both of us for fitness to parent. Likewise I copied them on other songs he wrote about killing sprees. I doubled down on security measures, like replacing gates he could climb over with higher gates that would keep him out, updating the security system, etc.
HA, I don’t think your cheater is a “run of the mill” cheater. You wrote, “He basically messages every woman in a 200 mile radius on this dating site and ushers them through a sales pipeline.” The only thing I might want to know from that would be the names of the women, so I can keep them out of my life.
For some reason your letter made VelvetHammer think of a killer. Trust her instincts. Call local and state Law enforcement and ask if they want a copy of everything on the computer. Protect yourself.
I just want a copy of the full letter so I can frame. Whenever I feel sorry for a dickhead, I can read it and get myself straightened out.
Could the title of that song be any more appropriate for what a chump needs to do?
I think it needs a rewrite for this rancid fuckwit.
Run (Like Your MFing Hair is In Fire)
Original song by Snow Patrol, snark by every chump in CN;
I’ll blame it one last time on you
Then I’m off to see my ho
You’ve been a useful chumpy thing
But you just don’t glow
And I can barely look at you
You’re sadly stuck with just one hue
My skittles rainbow life is great
Which you can’t appreciate
Shut up, shut up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I’ll be pissing in your ear
Streaming, steaming
As you run for your life
I’ll talk right out of my rear
And look into my microscope
To see what’s left of you, your hopes
Then give my little chump a grope
‘Cause I’m da man
Shut up, shut up
As if you have a say
I still have my sparkly array
And you’re just some shades of gray
Taupe and charcoal
You know I’m gonna get my way
Why you can’t up your game and stay
Get smaller, smaller
I don’t have time for you
All I want is to find another way
To get into your little head
To tap into your FOO
You’re sure to get screwed
It’s what guys like me do
Shut up, shut up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I’ll be pissing in your ear.
This is wonderful.
So glad to have another snarky creative in the fold
GMTA, Ux! If anyone merits two snarky songs it’s this clown.
(music by Cyndi Lauper, lyrics by Puerile Patrick)
Tune: https://youtu.be/LPn0KFlbqX8
You with the chump style
You just don’t get it
I’m a ‘me-phile’
And don’t you forget it
If you looked really deeply
It would change your rationale
I’m a study in courage
Just like that German gal
But you see a few colors
Not the rest
None of the new colors
That make me a hot mess
So give me a sec to lay things down
My true colors, true colors
Are ‘Empty Black’ and ‘Manure Brown’ . . .
Wonderful. And you even got the German singer in.
There’s the reminder you need to never ever go back and try to get a why, an apology, an explanation or any kind of closure whatsoever. You’ll just get more of the same evil blame shifting abuse.
Unbelievable amount of prosaic bullshit there though, comes across as a total douche. Maybe you can’t see it now but you’ll be glad to get away and never have anything to do with this fool again, even though that might take some time. The abuse is strong with this one.
Yes, never go back with anything emotional. Be stone-cold factual if you absolutely have to deal with it because it’s legal, financial, or involves minors. My ex wrote entire epistles via email that I replied to with a sentence or two. After a while, he cut back some, and there were gaps. I keep hoping that he’ll give up, but whatever. I don’t lose sleep over it anymore.
Lawdie! If I had to listen to that that purple veined prose daily, I’d be cracked. He’s a dick and doesn’t deserve any oxygen. He actually makes my ex look not so bad. And he was and is still a massive dick but a very sneaky cheat who either said nothing or lied by omission so he could back track or pivot in nano seconds. But at least he didn’t inflict his mental masturbation wordles on me.
Did anyone else get that he wants to fuck 14 year old girls from Hamburg?
After I quit, the last boss I had in my former profession was splashed all over the headlines when credible allegations from nearly a dozen women emerged charging that he’d raped them as minors in cases going back 20 years or more. Before the news came out, the daughter of the president of the board of the company had been a friend and had told me how she’d once sought a job with the company, one for which she trained in a top school. But in response to this woman’s bid the boss went on a flowery, angry rhapsody to the board about how the position should have a younger woman in it (this friend was 28!), then went on and on and ON about the special native talents of a few teenage interns, sort of exhorting this woman to be more like the teenagers (no experience, half her age, half her education, spending all their time scrolling Insta makeup tutorials??). My first gut reaction to this story was spot on and would be confirmed later.
I got the same feeling when, at a job I’d had years before the one above, a slobbish middle age manager fumed after seeing an acclaimed production of St. Joan in New York and railed against the fact the actress was– as is pretty much the tradition in casting the difficult role– thirtyish, not 17 which would have roughly been the age of the real Joan. He also went on and on and on about it. El Slobbo turned out to have banged and impregnated one of his former high school students when he did a sabbatical teaching a media class.
You know who rails and rhapsodies about their super special ability to see super special qualities in underage girls and then compares adult women to them? Confirmed pedos.
I can imagine one reason why the OP shut down so much in response to the first D-Day. The truth is too damned awful. Adult women may be mere proxies for this guy’s true secret targets– children. Proximity to something so dark and terrible could make anyone’s brain melt. We may not know for sure but our lizard brains can sense the danger. And my personal experience is that no one is more dangerous, retaliatory and viciously manipulative than pervs with deeply illegal predilections. I quit both the jobs because these guys were genuine monsters. I saw the first boss I mentioned physically mistreat his wife (after which he scapegoated me as a potential witness) and had prosecuted the earlier one for attempted assault.
Oh, and I can understand how the creep in this post managed to get the OP to bond. No one mirrors more than serious pervs and pedos. It’s how they groom so they have to be exceptional at it. How else does one pretend deep fascination with tween and teen interests? Anyway, I remember an adult woman telling me– with a beaming, gaga expression– what a “teddy bear” the guy who assaulted me was. I understood why she thought this. When first meeting any female, this guy would light up like a Christmas tree as if she were the most fascinating creature in the world and he would ooze empathy and make feminist noises. Or whatever noises he thought would disarm the target. Sober, “intellechull” noises for smart, mature women; Santa Claus/protective daddy noises for very young women, etc.. It’s how he gathered fanatical flying monkeys too– mostly women. One attacked me after I filed charges so I had to file another police report.
I was an intern myself when I first started at this place and fell for the act, though not for him (much older, fat, yellow teeth, yuck). That field was so filled with harassers that I was happy to have someone in my “corner.” That impression didn’t last. But what shocked me was how everyone seemed to adore this guy. His former girlfriend approached me with one of his former Ivy League alums after I filed charges and the girlfriend apologized to me for not having gone public with what he had done to her. She felt it could have stood as a warning to others. She herself had felt outnumbered and surrounded by his flying monkeys and was afraid of losing her career and all her friends. She even got sucked into remaining friends with him after his abuse drove her to leave. But when she heard of what happened to me, she got angry and submitted written testimony to the DA. She had graduated summa from Stanford, had a very credible personality and looked like a French movie star yet feared no one would believe her over a balding, coked-up maniac who was trailed by rumors of screwing high school students. Because mirroring works.
“Did anyone else get that he wants to fuck 14 year old girls from Hamburg?”
????
This guy is all kinds of sick and depraved.
I saw this this morning (on FB? on Reddit?) and while it gave me dry heaves trying to finish his verbal diarrhea (I couldn’t finish it), someone referred to it (if I remember correctly) as “verbal masturbation”! Even better!
I have given up on trying to understand people whose values and lifestyle do not align with mine. As long as they do not try to interfere with my life, I am content to ignore theirs. Since I learned how to “focus” my attention on things that are important to me, my life has grown much calmer and happier.
I consider myself to be a creative person, one who has some skills in communication, and singing, and some amateur acting skills (school and community theater productions, years ago). When I was in that creative world of amateur performers, I found some very strange and sometimes troubling personalities. I tried to understand them, but in the long run I found I was better off limiting my interactions with them. Someone who writes a manual about their own care and feeding is a little too egotistical and out there for me. It may be freedom of artistic expression, but it will not be on my reading list.
If someone tries to blame me for their own choices and actions, I terminate my exposure to them. If you learn how to limit exposure to toxic people and learn how to not question why they do anything, you will be much happier IMHO.
This person has wasted more than enough of her time. Move on, find meaning in other people and causes. Let this egotistical wonderfully artistic freak free to share himself with those who find him interesting or challenging. There is nothing there for you to miss.
I’m naturally a criminal psych buff so I tend to knee-jerkedly untangle and dissect but I’d only recommend doing it from the other end of a thirty-foot barge pole. It’s dangerous for victims to stay in proximity with or engaged with perpetrators in order to “understand” them. It’s like trying to understand someone shooting a tranq gun at you. Their words tend to stun and confuse and blind you to their actions in the immediate and it’s only with time and serious distance that any MO would become clear anyway. That is, if someone is even into that kind of thing and many are not. Some would rather garden and think about astronomy, etc.
Holy SHIT!!!!
I had a manual, too, asshole! Item #1 was don’t perform sex acts with other people. FAIL!!!
Today’s post… wow. Thanks to CL for sparing us from most of it. What a nut! But the comments by CN have had me lol all morning. This reminds me of “If you can’t be a good example you will be a horrible warning.” Lesson to us all to stay very low or no contact and not stick our heads in the blenders of the Ms. or Mr. Special we have shared history with. I can’t imagine being exposed to more of that freak! Ugh!
I’ve never wanted to throat-punch someone so much in my life.
Yup. CL was right. Bullshit and blameshifting.
Let this be a lesson. They only think about themselves.
Hahahaha, is this the soliloquy before he breaks out into song?
????I had a dream in days gone by????
Good God, what a crock of shit!
Don’t give him stage any longer, you’ll only encourage him!
I dreamed a dream inside my fly
I was a star and had a harem
I dreamed they’d grovel for my schlong
If I said strip then they would bare ’em
That was back when I was cool
Not pretentious, dull and screechy
Not just a wanking, squawking tool
I fancied myself Friedrich Nietzsche
But the chumps they come online
And charge me with bloviation
They are mocking my hairline
And my verbal masturbation…
HOAC
????
It’s your fault for not getting to know him well enough to spiritually connect with his tender cheating underbelly, and yet also your fault for being so obtuse that you made him cheat. See how he makes it both ways so that you can’t win?
They will find a way to make it your fault no matter what you do and no matter what you did. Expect that any communication will be spun around to make you the at-fault party, so don’t bother.
You are right to be angry, and you’re right that what you’ve been through and continue to go through is extremely unfair. But he will never see it that way, and your attempts to make him see only splatter you with the blow-back from his pathetic drivel.
Grey rock is your best survival tool and your best revenge.